Introduction

Welcome to Roman Provincial Coinage Online. Roman Provincial Coinage (RPC) exists in two published forms. You are on 'RPC online'. It is essentially an online database enabling you to access and search coins from all the Roman provinces. There is also a printed version. The printed version contains much introductory material, to individual cities, to the provinces of the Roman empire, and to the historical development of the coinage. This material is not available on RPC online. The RPC Online site, however, is continually being brought up to date with new coins and coin issues, as new ones are discovered after the publication of the printed books. The project is being prepared in chronological slices. The project is not complete and so far only Volumes I, II, III, VII, and IX have been published as printed volumes. Significantly more material is already available online.

There are two ways of searching RPC Online. You are encouraged to use the simple search which will enable you to find almost anything. It works like Google search, so just type in what interests you. You will find advanced search helpful only for complicated questions, for example if you are trying to identify a worn coin and you can see only some parts of the inscriptions or designs; or if you have an academic query. You can map the results of your searches simply by hitting the ‘Map’ tab after your search.

Contents

  1. Overview: a few examples

  2. What is Roman provincial coinage?

  3. Why is provincial coinage interesting?

  4. What designs are on the coins?

  5. What is the writing on the coins?

  6. How much were the coins worth?

  7. Further reading