Evidence That Was Meant to Last
Most sources survive by accident. Coins and inscriptions survive by design, made durable on purpose.
Coins as Dense Archives
A Roman coin carries a date via emperor titulature and annual renewals, narrowing the strike year.
It carries a message: reverses advertise victories, legitimacy, or favour as the state's mass medium.
It carries an economy: metal fineness is measurable. The silver denarius drops from ~97% under Augustus to ~5% by the mid-third century.
It carries geography: mint marks show where, and hoard distributions map crises.
The Stratigraphic Trick
A coin in a layer gives a terminus post quem: the layer cannot be earlier than the strike date.
Wear is a clock: a nearly-new coin narrows the interval, while a worn coin may have circulated for decades.
Inscriptions: The Chiselled Voice
Epigraphy studies texts on hard materials. Its structural virtues include:
| Virtue | Why it holds |
|---|---|
| Uncopied | No scribes intervened |
| Located | Stands where it was meant |
| Public | Must be plausible |
| Formulaic | Conventions aid restoration |
Crucially, inscriptions name ordinary people missing from literary sources, like soldiers and midwives.
The Fundamental Pitfall
Both media are official and expensive. A coin proclaiming CONCORDIA MILITUM is near-proof that the army was mutinous.
Nobody advertises what they already have. Read messages as evidence of anxiety, and read the metal, wear, and findspot as evidence of the crisis.