BOOK REVIEW: ANCIENT ROME IN TWELVE COINS

I wish I'd had Gareth Harney as a professor when I was in college. While his book, "A History of Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins," is dense with facts, it's also great fun to read. Not only does Harney put a new twist on how to think about history, but the way he uses his archeological instincts to first track down and then explicate the bronze, silver and gold coins the Roman Empire created before it fell in 476 A.D. is absorbing — even gripping.

It is a story of fantastic achievements like the Colosseum (Harney devotes a chapter to that iconic structure) and the aqueducts that gave Roman forces entrée to lands they wanted to conquer. It also is the story of rulers spanning the celebrity military genius Julius Caesar, the complex philosopher Marcus Aurelius, and Claudius, the Roman Senate's errand boy, eager to do the bidding of the Praetorian Guard. It is a bloody story, too.

Each ruler was immortalized in Roman coinage, a calling for Harney ever since his father pressed a 2,000-year-old piece of silver into his hand as a boy. Coins are a gateway to the past, a form of propaganda, and a kind of newsreel, Harney suggests.

"Coins need little explanation to evoke a pang of recognition," he writes. "They have been treasured friends on our human journey for over a hundred generations—and yet it seems increasingly likely that our very generation will be the one to break that long bond." Crypto currency is digital, not tangible, after all.

Harney covers a thousand-plus years in his creative, colorful recap of the rise and fall of the Roman world, which began as a village on a hilltop and ended as an empire that stretched from Europe to Asia to the Middle East to Africa, before Goths and Vandals put an end to it.

What makes this book unique is the way Harney frames history: through coins struck at various mints, starting with Juno Moneta, a temple in Rome dedicated to Juno, the city's divine protector and the wife of Jupiter, king of the Gods. Juno Moneta became the Roman mint, and as such, it was the source of the wealth of the emperors and, perhaps most importantly, their ability to support the military.

The book begins with a chapter called "Wolf," Harney's account of the mythological birth of Rome thanks to Romulus and Remus, brothers said to have founded the city. It ends, appropriately, with "Collapse," a chapter about the sacking of Rome by Goths on Aug. 24, 410.

The empire had been crumbling for some time, its leaders were corrupt, its governance overextended and its power base shifted to Constantinople. On that August day, the Germanic mercenary Odoacer entered the imperial palace at Ravenna and told Augustulus, the boy emperor, that "his service would no longer be required."

That day signaled the end of the classical period and the beginning of the Middle Ages. But as we are taught by Harney, Roman coins keep such significant and engrossing history alive.

To read the complete article, see:
Review: Gareth Harney and his minted history of Rome (https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/books/2025/01/12/gareth-harney-history-of-ancient-rome-coins-roman-empire/stories/202501120035)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
NEW BOOK: MONETA: ANCIENT ROME IN TWELVE COINS (https://www.coinbooks.org/v27/esylum_v27n19a02.html)

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