TLDR: Download the coin from my Thingiverse at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5908546. I’ve also put all the coins into a collection at https://www.thingiverse.com/krypted/collections/37539515/things.
The first coins to arrive in the Italian Peninsula were influenced by the Greeks, as they colonized the coastal areas. Rome was a village as early as the 1,400s BCE and as a city was founded in 753 BCE, although archaeological evidence shows that people inhabited the area as far as 14,000 years ago. It began as a monarchy but by 509 BCE had become a republic. By the third and second century, Rome had been trading with the Greeks, then throughout the Mediteranian, modern Europe, what we now consider the Middle East, and northern Africa. They didn’t just trade, but conquered.
The population of the city grew, and by the 200s BCE, they had minted their first coins, inspired by the Greek colonies. The romans conquered Macedonia in the Macedonian wars, which concluded in 146 BCE, when Macedonia was split into two Roman Republics.
The Roman coins were made of round disks that were pressed, or minted. Before machines, therse were pressed by blacksmiths in bronze, copper, gold, or silver. The most popular of their coins was the Denarius, which was minted as far back as 211 BCE and became one of the most important coins in the world for over 400 years. The standard was that one of these was equal to one 72nd of a pound (or at least a Roman pound). Julius Caesar introduced gold coins as the silver had become degraded over the next couple of centuries. After that the denarius was gradually phased into a copper coin, like a penny in the United States today.
Where the Romans went, coins soon followed. Places like Hispania (now simply Spain) began to mint coins and after the end of Roman occupation, began to replace the iconography on coins with their own. Others adopted the standardized relationship to weights. After he defeated the Gauls, Caesar crossed the river Rubicon and marched on Rome, becoming dicator for life in 44 BCE before being assasinated. The denarii from that year had his portrait, much as the coins from Alexander’s generals as they split his empire bore the profile of Alexander. Ocatavian Augustus replaced Caeser and became the first and longest ruling emperor, bringing peace and stability to the empire for over 40 years.
The idea of coins predated the Romans by centuries. The way the Romans conquered, the extent of their empire, and the further extent of their trade caused the tribes they conquered and traded with to issue coins as well. Over the centuries, the dies that coins were struck from improved and the resolution at such large scale showed more stylized features of emperors. Yet the fitneness of the metal reduced, from the high 90s to the 80s in the time of Nero in the decades after the turn of the millenium, to half in the era of Septimius Severus, from 193 to 211 CE. By 270 CE, the weibght of coins was around half what the weight had been in 211 BCE, when those early coins were struck. It wouldn’t be until the rule of Constantine that they had to start over and create a new currency – but by then it became the Byzantine empire, who no longer ruled from Rome.
Inflation and scarcity of metals are a thing. As people traded through coin rather than barter, the value of the metals in the coins skyrocketed. Spices like frankincense, myrrh, cinnamon, and pepper flowed in from that lands of Arabia. Silk flowed in through trade routes to China. Spices flowed in from India. Gems flowed in from around the world. The Romans shifted from conquerors to consumers, with voracious appetites. They even traded for exotic animals like tigers and leopards from Asia, Africa, and deep into other continents. Roman coins have been found throughout these lands, even traded in the dynasties that replaced them. At least, until they created their own coins, or restamped Roman coins like when Jewish rebels restamped the tetradrachm and denarius. Although some Roman rulers restamped previous coins as well. It’s important to have your effigy out there for the people to see, if only to prove why you should rule them, when their lives aren’t getting much better otherwise.
