Aes signatum

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Aes signatum from the end of the 4th century

Aes signatum (original meaning: incised ore; analogous meaning: designated bronze ; plural: Asses signata ) is the Latin name for standardized bars made of a castable copper alloy (e.g. bronze), which were stamped immediately after casting. In the history of the development of the means of payment , they lie between simple bars or lumps of metal (in Rome: Aes rude ; with standardized weight: Aes formatum ) and cast coins (in Rome: Aes grave ). You can see stamped bars as the first money , because only the stamp made validity .

The stamps denoted certain dimensions and were regarded as the manufacturer's guarantee. Compared to simple bars, stamped bars offered the advantage that they did not have to be weighed for every payment process, but only as a check. The quality of the alloy was secondary because it was visually recognizable. Their value corresponded to their weight.

In Italy, stamped bars were first produced by the Etruscans in the 7th century BC . They weighed between 600 g and 3 kg and were therefore unsuitable as a daily means of payment. In Rome , the city itself began to issue Asses signata with a standardized weight of 5 libra or As , as around 1.2 kg, in the 4th century . They often bore depictions of cattle or ritual objects on both sides. They were followed in the 2nd half of the 3rd century by the heavy, cast bronze coins ( Aes grave ) with a value of 1 As. It is possible that the Romans copied the minted silver coins that were already in circulation in the Greek colonized southern Italy. Asses signata were made around 240 BC. Chr. Unusual. The monetary system was in effect until the second Punic War . Around 211 BC It was replaced by a system based on the Denarius .

literature

  • Reinhard Wolters : Nummi Signati: Studies on Roman coinage and money economy . CH Beck, Munich 1999.

Web links

Commons : Aes signatum  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hermann Quantity, Erich Pertsch: Langenscheidts pocket dictionary of the Latin and German language. First part Latin-German. Berlin Munich Zurich 1963.
  2. ↑ Bernhard J. Müller (Ed.): Paperback Latin. Latin German. ISBN 978-3-8174-6762-4
  3. ↑ Robert Lehmann : Real or False? A new way of differentiating between Aes Grave and ancient bronzes. In: Robert Lehmann, Karola Hagemann (Ed.): Treasure finds - Fund coins. Numismatics between archeology, forensics and chemistry (= Hanoverian Numismatic Contributions. Volume 3). Verlag Marie Leidorf, Rahden (Westphalia) 2019, ISBN 978-3-86757-688-8 , pp. 112-137, here p. 115.
  4. ^ Ernst Justus Haeberlin: Aes grave. The heavy money of Rome and Central Italy including the raw bronze currency that preceded it. 2 volumes, hall 1910.
  5. ↑ Reinhard Wolters: Nummi Signati: Studies on Roman coinage and money economy , p. 11
  6. ↑ Reinhard Wolters: Nummi Signati: Studies on Roman coinage and money economy , p. 12
  7. ↑ Reinhard Wolters: Nummi Signati: Studies on Roman coinage and money economy , p. 12