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Coinage In Celtic society

stronger nobles, and individual nobles with free warriors, by means of a complex system of grants, customary payments, and tribute was replaced by universal State taxation. Among the Aedui, at least, State taxes were farmed out at auction, perhaps in imitation of contemporary Roman practice. Customary dues traditionally paid by warriors to nobles thus became tax to the State, and the State became the only military paymaster, though there is reason to think that the constituent districts of each State retained important military functions, and might therefore also issue distinctive series of State coinage on occasion: the first century Arverni, for instance, seem to have had at least two mints for gold and several for silver. At the same time tributary ties among the nobility were dissoIved; customary payments may have been converted into compulsory expenditure on state enterprises in the course of political office, which had long been familiar in the Mediterranean world.

These newly formed Celtic States seem to have had a keen sense of their separate identities, as did the Mediterranean cities, and with the demise of the traditional imperatives that had linked foreign nobilities by constant interchanges of gifts, services, and personnel, a much greater degree of contrast suddenly appeared, not only in coinage types, but also in the weight and alloy of the coinages even of immediate neighbours. In this respect alone they differ markediy from third-phasc paramount coinages. This change may have been promoted by the institution of centralized taxation, for it was important to encourage State treasure that had been paid out in the form of coinage to return to the state in the form of taxes. Idiosyncratic money would be inconvenient for use outside its community of origin, so would tend to remain within its sphere of automatic validity or to return swiftly to it if it drifted abroad.

The wellbeing of the Gallic oligarchie States seems to have depended upon sustained and profitable trade with the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul under the aegis of treaties of ofBcial friendship with the Senate, and the rising prosperity of their aristocracies during the first half of the first century bc was re-flected in the rapid development of urban settlements with large non-agricultural populations, something that fostered the spread of bronze coinage.

Everywhere in the ancient world, Iow-value bronze coinage was used to make subsistence payments, whether to soldiers on campaign or to othcr servants of the state, and its use generally flourished wherever there were largo populations dependent upon markets in whieh to purchase food. In generał circulation it grcatly faeilitated the growth of town life. Bronze coinage was already familiar to the developed tribal societies that had evolved into oligarchie States, and many central Callic communities were already using it by the beginning of the second century bc. The Aedui and Segusiavi seem to have taken the lead in this respect, loosely modelling their earliest bronze coinages upon that of Massilia, and a comparable development took place in south-eastern Britain during the first century ad . Transition to oligarchie statehood seems mainly to have extended the use of bronze coinage, and there it was produced in colossal ąuantities. Numerous casual losses on settlement sites meant that bronze coinage was in fact to become the commonest surviving relic of the currency of the late Celtic world, reflecting its use for daily transactions in many areas of Caul and, much later, in Southern Britain. Its functions after the Roman conquest have been outlined in chapter 2.