# Numismatics and Epigraphy

History I · Historical Sources · https://tryals.app/learn/history-i/numismatics-and-epigraphy

## 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**.

$$\text{proclaimed value} \;\gg\; \text{metal value}$$

Nobody advertises what they already have. Read messages as evidence of anxiety, and read the metal, wear, and findspot as evidence of the crisis.

## Practice questions

6 of this lesson's 11 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. The denarius fell from about 97% silver under Augustus to about 5% by the mid-third century. By what percentage of its original fineness had it fallen? (Give the drop as a percentage of the original, to the nearest whole number.)

**Answer:** 95 (within ±2)

**Why:** About 95% of the silver, gone. You can weigh the third-century crisis: the state kept the coin’s name and face and quietly removed almost everything it was made of, an inflation curve preserved in metal.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/numismatics-and-epigraphy/the-denarius-fell-from-about-97-silver-under-augustus-to-about-5-by

### 2. Sort each element of a coin: **reliable evidence** or **state advertising**?

**Answer:**

- Reliable evidence: Measured silver fineness, The mint mark and findspot, Degree of wear on the surfaces
- State advertising: A legend proclaiming the harmony of the soldiers, A reverse celebrating an unshakeable victory, An image presenting the emperor as a god’s favourite

**Why:** The metal cannot lie and the message rarely does anything else. Reliability is exactly inverted from what durability suggests, read the physical, distrust the verbal.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/numismatics-and-epigraphy/sort-each-element-of-a-coin-reliable-evidence-or-state-advertising

### 3. Complete the reading of a coin.

**Answer:** The titulature supplies a **date**, often to the year. Measured fineness records the **debasement**, with the denarius collapsing from 97% to 5% silver. But the legend is advertising: CONCORDIA MILITVM is evidence of **mutiny**, because nobody proclaims what they already have.

**Why:** Date, debasement, mutiny, three readings, and only the last one requires you to disbelieve the object entirely.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/numismatics-and-epigraphy/complete-the-reading-of-a-coin

### 4. A worn coin of 60 CE is found in a layer. What does it establish?

A. Nothing, because the coin may have been moved
B. Not earlier than 60 CE, but possibly later
C. The layer cannot be later than 60 CE
D. The layer dates to precisely 60 CE

**Answer:** B. Not earlier than 60 CE, but possibly later

**Why:** It gives a terminus post quem and nothing more. Wear is the clock: nearly-new narrows the interval to a few years, worn smooth may mean fifty years of pockets before it was dropped. The gap between strike and deposition is the whole art.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/numismatics-and-epigraphy/a-worn-coin-of-60-ce-is-found-in-a-layer-what-does-it-establish

### 5. What makes inscriptions structurally valuable as evidence?

A. Being official, their claims are more likely to be true
B. Being public, their claims had to be plausible to contemporaries
C. They stand where they were meant to stand
D. No copyists intervened, you read what was cut

**Answer:** B. Being public, their claims had to be plausible to contemporaries; C. They stand where they were meant to stand; D. No copyists intervened, you read what was cut

**Why:** Uncopied, located, and publicly constrained. But officialdom is not truthfulness, a monument says what someone could afford to have said permanently, which is a different thing entirely.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/numismatics-and-epigraphy/what-makes-inscriptions-structurally-valuable-as-evidence

### 6. Assaying the silver content of dated coins across a century produces a fiscal history no chronicle contains. What is being measured?

A. Inflation, which is directly read from the metal content
B. Debasement: metal quietly reduced while face value held
C. Improvements in minting technology over the period
D. Changes in mining output, which determined how much silver was available

**Answer:** B. Debasement: metal quietly reduced while face value held

**Why:** The metal is a physical record of a policy no ruler announced, so a curve of fineness traces fiscal desperation directly. It is the classic case of unwitting testimony in numismatics, the coin was not trying to tell you anything, which is precisely why it can be trusted.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/numismatics-and-epigraphy/assaying-the-silver-content-of-dated-coins-across-a-century-produces