Roman and Byzantine Law

Roman and Byzantine Law

Roman and Byzantine law dealt rigorously with coinage abuses such as counterfeiting and irrational discounts applied to coins, setting a brutal standard that would survive into the nineteenth century.

The earliest counterfeiting law preserved in the Codex Theodosianus came from the emperor Constantius II in a.d. 343. It reads:

Emperor Constantius Augustus to Leontius, Praetorian Prefect

A reward having been offered to informers, let every counterfeiter of solidi that can be found, or that is exposed by any man, be immediately and without any delay delivered over to the burning flames.

(Hendy, 1985)

The solidus was a Roman and Byzantine gold coin first issued by the emperor Constantine. Other laws prescribed the same punishment for clipping solidi or passing counterfeit solidi in transactions.

Despite the rigorous brutality of the law, the death penalty seems rarely to have been carried out during the fourth century. The Easter amnesties of 367, 368, and 380 excluded certain crimes such as treason, sorcery, murder, adultery, or rape, but made no reference to counterfeiting, suggesting that counterfeiting was considered a less serious crime. After 381 counterfeiters are expressly excluded from amnesties, indicating that counterfeiting was definitely a capital crime. Roman law sometimes treated counterfeiting as an act of treason, which was always a capital crime. Counterfeiting copper coinage drew lessor penalties, such as confiscation of property.

The Romans and Byzantines faced a puzzling coinage problem that would seem irrational in a more financially sophisticated age. Some of the solidi were valued not according to gold content but according to the size or other characteristics of the images on the coins. Touching on this subject, the Codex of Theodosianus preserves a law issued by the Emperor Constantine in 317. It reads:

Emperor Constantine Augustus to Leontius, Praetorian Prefect

All solidi on which Our face and venerability is to be found are to be valued and sold at one price, however diverse the extent of the image. For that which is spread out with a larger representation of Our face is not worth more, and that which is contracted with a smaller portrait is not to be thought worth less, when the same weight is present, and if anyone should suppose otherwise he is to be capitally punished either by being handed over to the flames or by some other death-carrying instrument. [And indeed he that should nibble away the extent of the outside edge of a solidus, so as to diminish the total of its weight, or should replace a stamped solidus with a false imitation in a sale, is to suffer in the same fashion.]

(Hendy, 1985)

Apparently, solidi bearing a smaller portrait of the emperor were passing at a discount compared to solidi bearing a larger portrait, and solidi bearing images of past emperors or relations of the current emperor circulated at a discount compared to solidi bearing a portrait of the reigning emperor.

The legendary brutality of the Romans may account for the harsh penalties levied against counterfeiters. In nineteenth-century England, however, counterfeiters of paper money faced hanging. Counterfeiting has always been a serious offense.