![]() The city of Narbo was build as their regional seat of government and in an unusual practice for the time they established new mint at Narbo from which came an immense issue of serrated denarii depicting the head of Roma on the obverse, a Celtic warrior in his chariot on the reverse, which several variations of inscriptions naming Roman government and military officials involved the conquest and colonial government.Ĭonstructing a new city required a lot of coins to pay local labor and suppliers. In 121 BC Roman capturing territory from the Allobroges and Arverni tribes in Gaul, where in 118 BC they established their first colony in Gaul. ![]() At the time Rome used mostly bronze coins so denarii were not yet a significant part of the local Roman economy, with most of these early denarii issued for foreign payments.Ĩ7 years then passed with only smooth edge denarii struck. Rome was involved in the second Punic war and the first Macedonian War, both of which would have involved large payments to foreign people in North Africa, Sicily and Macedonia. Friedman for pointing out this early type to me). The first serrated denarii were struck anonymously about 209 to 208 BC, and appear to have been minted in Sicily (thank you to Kenneth L. I believe the time line of their issue suggests this is the correct theory. The second theory is serrations pre-exposed the solid silver making such coins more readily acceptable to as payment to non-Roman people less used to Roman denarii who might there wise have wanted to test cut every coin before accepting a large payment of many denarii. If it were to stop counterfeiting why were most denarii issued without serrations. The problem with this theory is large numbers of non-serrated denarii were issued simultaneously with serrated ones and there are long periods during which only non-serrated denarii were issued. Thus serrating denarii would be an effective anti-counterfeiting method at a time many fouree denarii were appearing, although a few serrated fourrée are known, they are very rare. Cutting serrations in a copper core already wrapped in silver would expose the copper core defeating the purpose. Wrapping silver foil around an already serrated copper core would cover the serrations so that they would not show. The first is an anti-counterfeiting measure making the minting of counterfeit fourrée (silver wrapped base metal core) denarii difficult. I know of two competing theories for that need. It seems unlikely this would be done without a specific need to do so. With 33 individual serrations, not unusual for one of these, it would have been very labor intensive to serrate the several hundred thousand coins of each type that would have been issued (possibly a million for some issues). Thus the serrations are part of the original minting process. Had they been post striking they would still be perpendicular to the edge, and highly worn in circulation. This is consistent with the ridges being raised prior to striking and pushed flat on striking. A chisel cut to the edge of a coin would raise ridges perpendicular to the surface, yet these have been pushed flat parallel to the surface inside the cuts. There are metal ridges inside of many of the cuts, parallel to the coin's surface, even on mint state examples. This shows each serration was individually cut, probably with a hammer and chisel. ![]() The depth and spacing of the serrations are inconsistent as are their positions when two example of the same type are compared. I have looked at many examples and I can make the following observations. While a rare example could exist as a mint error, I have never encountered one. We do not see any types with both serrated and non-serrated examples. While relatively common, after more than 200 years numismatists have agreed on why some types of Republican denarii are serrated others are not, even if issued simultaneously. Serrated denarii are unique to the Roman Republic with most issued from the late 2nd to early 1st century BC. The reverse depicts Cupid flying over a biga driven right by Saturn, with "L. The obverse depicts the right facing head of Saturn with ROMA behind. This Roman Republican denarius was issued by L.
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