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TYPES OF VIOLENCE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

societies, coinage deserves a dedicated chapter, which is covered by A. Bresson in ‘Money Exchange and the Economics of Inequality in the Ancient Greek and Roman World’. Bresson’s analysis hinges on the fundamental principle that making money was always a profitable business for ancient States. This profit resulted primarily from the State monopoly on the currency in use within its dominion, which meant that any foreign currencies had to be exchanged at a rate that was advantageous to the issuing State. A primary form of inequality stemmed from the imbalance between stronger political entities, monopolising vaster territories and larger resources, and weaker ones. A second form of profit for the State derived from the fee charged on any transfer of value from one lower level of coinage to a higher one, particularly from bronze denominations to silver and gold ones. Since the vast majority of the population used almost exclusively bronze coins, this contributed to widening the gap between different social strata. Some examples are discussed in detail, chiefly the evolution of the closed monetary system of Egypt, from the Ptolemies to the Romans, and the mechanisms of money-changing and of imperial control on provincial fees in Roman Asia Minor. This is an informative and thought-provoking volume, whose main merit is probably to tackle seemingly old research questions from an unusual perspective. The reader is left with the stimulating thought that, even though in ancient societies (especially the Roman Empire, ‘an extraordinarily hierarchical space’) inequality could be ‘deliberately cultivated’ (p. 191), it often represented only one facet, not necessarily negative, of the complex process of interaction between different political entities or social actors.