S5003990

Coinage in Celtic society

century ad), and in morę sedentary Celtic societies, important residential centres with evidenee for large-scale manufacturing and exchange, such as the oppida of first-century bc central Caul. In such an environment coinage had an increasingly wide rangę of functions uh ich might include support of a large non-agricultural population, and fractional silver or bron/.e coinage was widely employed. Perhaps the best examples of this phenomenon are in south-western Caul in the first century bc and Southern Britain a century later.

The coinage of a paramount kingdom such as that of Cunobelin in Britain seems to reflect its political structure. A single high-valueprestige coinage, typically of gold, prevailed throughout the paramount territory, accompanieci by one or morę lower-value, generally silver, coinages issued either from the paramount centre itself or from component tri bal areas. The latter were a measure of the local autonomy which was characteristic of dependent nobles when their submission had been voluntarily given. Where paramount expansion involved outright military concjuest, however, pre-existing coinages seem to disappear and be replaced by the victor’s own senes, as in Cunobelin’s Kent, but it was also characteristic for such a kingdom to expand by collecting or coercing the Voluntary’ allegiance of neighbours who could not so easily be integrated into the central territory. Paramount king-doms were therefore normally fringed by strongly autonomous though affiliated tri bal groups, who might go on striking independent local coinages which only related very generally to the main series of the adjacent paramount kingdom. Examples of this in Britain would be the coinages of Andoco under Tasciovanus and Epatticus under Cunobelin (see chapter 7). Such border communi-ties can have paid only a qualified allegiance to their distant overlord. Paramount kingdoms were the most advanced form of traditional tribal society, most of whose social customs and values were maintained. Paramount gold coinage therefore remained compatible with that of other related kingdoms.

But the stability of every paramount kingdom was inherently precarious, dependent as it was upon the personal qualities of its overlord, and such kingdoms tended to dissolve on the death of a successfuł king, as Callic Ambigatus evidently feared (see chapter 1), as actually happened in ad 43 on the death of Cunobelin in Britain, and as the mute evidence of coinage suggests may have

happened among the Bclgac during the second century bc (ttee chapter 6). This inherent instability, a serious disadvantage where lasting alliances with the Roman world were at stake, com-pounded the exorbitant financial cost of maintaining such a social order, and few Celtic paramount kingdoms were either very large or very long-lived.

Instead, in a few areas of Caul, perhaps confined to a zonę around the head of the Rhóne close to the Republican province, and exemplified by the Arverni, Aedui, and Helvetii, a finał series of internal political changes seem to have occured around the end of the second century bc. These gave rise to what Strabo described as ‘aristocratic’ go\ ernments, and seem to have been primitive forms of oligarchie State. Associated with these changes was an advanced form of the third phase of coinage.

These changes abolished the traditional system of personal allegiance between weaker and stronger nobles, each with their own territory and dependants, and replaced it with a Iegislatively constituted government of the same noble families col!ectively ruling an integrated territory at least the size of a paramount kingdom. The constitution of these early States seems generally to have been modelled on that of Massilia (Strobo 4. 1. 5.), with features. also influenced by Romę. They seem to have had a governing body or ‘senate’ drawn from the principal noble families, and elective magistrates who held ci vil and military office on behalf of the state for a limited term. Kingship was abolished, and many of the traditional functions of the ‘men of siali’ became obsolete. Patronage of such persons therefore took on an altered significance, morę a matter of personal taste and display, as in a Mediterranean env ironment, than a matter of political survival, and this released noble revenues for other objects of expenditure. One of the great advantages of this new arrangement was that tribal (state) territories no longer threatened to dissolve on the death of individual dominant nobles. This facilitated relations with the Roman world, for the Senate preferred to deal with stable external governments, and iaid foundations for successful incorporation into the Roman empire after the conąuesL

Under this new dispensation, tribal coinage became state coinage, struck from centralized revenues to make official pay-ments, above all to Citizen soldiers, as in the Mediterranean world itself. The contractual ties that previously linked weaker with

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