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 Replies: 8 / Views: 1,459 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4778 Posts |
Felt like I should set the record straight with this word. "Barbarous" with respect to imitative coins. It does not necessarily mean the coin was made by barbarians. It could have been made by a barbarian, or the average counterfeiter on the street; there is no way to tell who made these often-crude coins of the later Roman period. There was no organized polity making these. It was only when the Germanic tribes set up kingdoms on former Roman land, did they begin to set up coin minting operations that struck quality coinage like that of the Roman Empire.
A more proper term for barbarous would be "imitative" or "contemporary imitative", but I am not here to force anyone to use any term. Just to inform about the the word "barbarous" and the coins it describes. Edited by VisigothKing
11/26/2014 8:24 pm
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Valued Member
United Kingdom
435 Posts |
Though the later sense of the word became purely derogatory, it is worth bearing in mind that the origin of the sense was more nuanced, denoting foreigners generally:
barbarian (adj.) Look up barbarian at Dictionary.com
mid-14c., from Medieval Latin barbarinus (source of Old French barbarin "Berber, pagan, Saracen, barbarian"), from Latin barbaria "foreign country," from Greek barbaros "foreign, strange, ignorant," from PIE root *barbar- echoic of unintelligible speech of foreigners (compare Sanskrit barbara- "stammering," also "non-Aryan," Latin balbus "stammering," Czech blblati "to stammer").
Greek barbaroi (n.) meant "all that are not Greek," but especially the Medes and Persians. Originally not entirely pejorative, its sense darkened after the Persian wars. The Romans (technically themselves barbaroi) took up the word and applied it to tribes or nations which had no Greek or Roman accomplishments. The noun is from late 14c., "person speaking a language different from one's own," also (c.1400) "native of the Barbary coast;" meaning "rude, wild person" is from 1610s.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
5155 Posts |
I believe the term barbarian, meant anyone who did not speak Greek or Latin. If that's the case than it is possible that coins were made by those folks, but I know what your getting at. I always preferred the term imitative, although at what point in history does a coin stop being an imitation of an existing coin and become its own type. Does this occur once the host coin falls out of circulation, when the pictured authority dies and the coin is made posthumously, or does this only occur centuries later when the coin has morphed into something no longer recognizable as an imitation of the host. Hum. This will make for a wonderful discussion with many possible examples owned by members here.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
5155 Posts |
Well look at Val, intriguing!
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Moderator
 United States
23731 Posts |
The way I understand it is that these coins were struck by indigenous people on the fringes of the Roman empire. They were not Romans, but more or less groups or tribes that came under the sway of the Romans and wised to imitate their customs and coinage. So you are correct in saying that they are imitative and not barbaric coinage.
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
4778 Posts |
No one needed to be a "barbarian" to be a counterfeiter. The two aren't synonymous. Anyone who had the tools and materials to strike coins could have struck coins if they wanted to, even Romans or other people within the empire.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1315 Posts |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4778 Posts |
Unofficial... I forgot about that one, thanks doucet. Quote:
but still use barbarous sometimes. Yeah, I don't mind if anyone uses that term. I only hope that they know that those coins don't have to have been made by a barbarian or a tribe. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4973 Posts |
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Replies: 8 / Views: 1,459 |
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Posted 11/26/2014 8:30 pm
