In 1958, Michael Grant published a series of lectures under the title Roman History from Coins. Ten years later he issued a revised edition, but both versions explain why studying ancient coins sheds light on ancient history. As one example, he referred to Diocletian’s economic reforms made in the late 200s. “Our literary sources leave so many aspects of this monetary reform obscure,” Grant noted, “that such information from the coinage itself is of great value.” In May, 2024, Gareth Harney published Moneta, expanding upon Grant’s theme that coins serve as a primary source for historians and using twelve ancient Roman coins as the basis for a narrative history of ancient Rome.

A former teacher of literature, Harney lives in Wiltshire, England, and collects ancient coins. Since 2010 he has maintained a site on X, the former Twitter, @OptimoPrincipi. It has more than 140,000 followers and takes its name from the legend found on coins of the Roman emperor Trajan. During Trajan’s reign (98 to 117), the Roman Senate bestowed that compliment on him, a man Senators deemed optimus princeps, the best of their leaders. The best in its field, Harney’s @OptimoPrincipi features not only images of ancient coins, but also photographs of other ancient artefacts and of Harney’s extensive travels to visit Roman ruins.

Harney dedicates his book to his father, who when Harney was still in school gave him a coin of Trajan to start the boy’s coin collection. Coins from Harney’s collection help tell the story of ancient Rome without becoming a history of twelve coins, with technical numismatic terminology and data. Meanwhile, Harney wisely stays in the background, keeping his focus on Roman history, not on his commercial adventures acquiring various coins.

The book’s title comes from the Roman goddess Juno Moneta. At heart an agricultural people, the ancient Romans knew what any farmer throughout history has known, that geese can be better than dogs at keeping watch. On a moonless night in 390 B. C., geese sacred to Juno let loose with raucous squawking and warned the city of Rome of the stealthy approach of Celtic invaders. The word moneta derives from monere, Latin for “to warn,” and with the belief that Juno was their special protectress, the Romans put their minting of coins under her care. From those centuries of the Roman mint being within the temple precincts of Juno Moneta we get words such as “monetary” and “money.”

After telling as prologue the story of the origins of the Roman mint, Harney offers twelve chapters taking readers through more than a thousand years of Roman history. Harney is a gifted storyteller, and his narrative flows from the legendary founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus to the pensioning off of the last Roman emperor in the West, Romulus Augustulus.

Roman coins during the five centuries of the Republic depicted Roma, personification of the city itself, or divinities such as Juno Moneta. A pivotal change came in early 44 B. C., when Julius Caesar minted a new coin depicting himself and declaring him to be Dictator for Life. For some Senators like Brutus and Cassius, it was the last straw, and in March of 44 they and their colleagues stabbed Caesar to death. From that day until now, it has been a controversial act, people seeing Brutus and company either as traitors or as liberators.

As Harney notes, Dante Alighieri in his Divine Comedy imagines them in the pit of Hell, alongside Judas Iscariot, but William Shakespeare closes his play Julius Caesar with Mark Antony hailing Brutus as “the noblest Roman of them all.” Harney’s deep sense of history leads him to suggest a cautious conclusion: “Dante and Shakespeare, writing at either end of the Renaissance, disagree so profoundly on what Brutus represents, any attempt to reach a consensus today might seem an impossible task.”

Regardless of how one sees the assassination of Julius Caesar, the resulting political settlement overseen by his great-nephew and adopted son and heir, Octavian, variously marched or staggered on for close to five hundred years. The Senate conferred on Octavian the title of Augustus, and after his death it declared him to be a god. Harney charts the development from Augustus restoring peace (if not the Republic) and commemorating it on his coins to Constantine putting on his coins the Chi Rho monogram of Christ, the Prince of Peace.

Along the way, Harney takes us into the arena, a defining feature of Roman life. Today it can be difficult to comprehend the enormous expenditure of public funds to establish in every Roman city an amphitheatre where spectators could watch men and animals being killed. In our day, a sporting event might result in broken bones or concussion, but those games are not played for the sake of seeing those injuries occur. In contrast, Romans went to see the games knowing that someone was going to get killed. That apparently casual bloodlust permeating Roman culture must be kept in mind today when admiring bucolic frescoes from Pompeii and philosophical letters by Seneca.

While we see war and murder portrayed in television and theatre, opera and film, ancient Romans saw them as a reality of daily life. That fact informed Christian teaching as well, notably when in the early 500s Saint Benedict put in Chapter 4 of his monastic Rule the admonition to “keep death daily before one’s eyes.” Far from being morbid, that injunction reminds us to be aware that if something will not be important on one’s deathbed, it is not important now. When Harney tells us the story of Marcus Aurelius, he notes the debt to ancient Stoic philosophy of modern Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Although Harney does not mention it, one way to sum up Stoic facing of facts is with the wise words of Charlton Heston’s character in the 1968 Planet of the Apes: “We are here, and it is now.”

Even if, heaven forefend, Harney someday decides to delete @OptimoPrincipi, with the tangible and durable format of a hardcover book he has given students of ancient Rome a rare gift. This excellent book serves as a readable refresher course for those of us who have been fascinated by ancient Rome since boyhood. Moreover, Moneta will prove to be a useful, even page-turning, text for teaching homeschoolers and undergraduates the long history of one of the world’s most important and influential civilizations.