Roman Coins, Impossible to Spend

Ostia was the major port hub in the Roman Empire from which the Roman Empire managed trade across the Mediterranean – grain, timber, olive oil, luxuries, silk, and wild animals for gladiatorial games.

We know that Rome traded with the East for spices, ivory, jewels, and other luxuries from existing documents and a wall painting found at Ostia dating from second century A.D. which depicted a Roman trading ship being loaded with goods.

Trading land routes were blocked when the powerful Parthian Empire in Persia cut off established trading roads. Hippalus, a Greek merchant from the first century B.C., learned how to use the southwest monsoon to sail to and from the Indian sub-continent. When he provided a good geographical map of the winds, other merchants took advantage of this opportunity and trade flourished. For forty days in July and August, merchants voyaged from Arabian ports to the Malabar ports in the southwestern coasts of India. In December and January, same merchants returned via the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. Trade routes stretched as far as Sri Lanka, Burma, Malaya, and even China.

During the reign of Augustus (27 B.C. to 14 A.D.) commerce with India satisfied the demand from rich Romans who purchased jewels, silk, pearls, and other luxuries. One ship brought curiosities, a man born without arms, a large river turtle, snakes, and a “partridge as big as a vulture.” Roman design export bowls of Arretine ware (Arezzo, Italy) were found in old trading posts in India. More than 120 ships sailed each year on the monsoon from Roman-controlled Egypt to India. Alexandrian Greek merchants provided all the raw materials and luxuries that the Roman Empire demanded. Exotic and rare pearls and gemstones were brought from Sri Lanka.

The Greek merchants paid the Indian traders at first with gold coins. Although the Indians could not spend the currency, the fact that Roman gold and silver coins were always dependable in the amount of gold and silver contained, the Indians used it as store of value in the form of bullion. Pliny wrote that the quality of Roman coins, the same weight and content in gold and silver, made Roman coins so desirable to collect. The King of Sri Lanka was impressed by the “honest traders of Rome.”

The first Roman coins were found in India in 1775. Archeologists and historians at the time assumed that the coins had been abandoned or lost in extenuating circumstances, buried, and forgotten. However, more recently, historians believed that Indians kept the coins not as a medium of exchange but as bullion. It is a known fact that Indian girls’ dowries are composed of gold jewelry and gems which the brides wear with elaborate wedding dresses made of colorful silks.

However, when the silver coins were debased under Emperor Nero, the Indian merchants’ confidence in Roman coins waned and traders used other substitutes for exchange such as high-quality tableware, glass, linen, coral, lamps, wine, and fashioned gems. Eventually, Arabs and Persians took over the trade as the Roman trade with India came to a halt in the third century A.D.