Markus Beyeler, Geschenke des Kaisers. Studien zur Chronologie, zu den Empfängern und zu den Gegenständen der kaiserlichen Vergabungen im 4. Jahrhundert (KLIO / Beihefte. Neue Folge 18), Berlin 2011
Since the early imperial era, donativa were part of the emperor’s duty to soldiers and praetorians on special occasions (e.g. reign anniversaries). They were an expression of the imperial generosity (liberalitas) and served to maintain the goodwill of the troops towards the emperor. From the 3rd century onwards, these gifts, referred to as largitiones, increasingly developed into an obligation that served to secure the ruler’s power, since whoever knew the troops on their side would be safe from violent impeachment.
Markus Beyeler submitted his dissertation to the University of Bern in 2009 and published it in 2011. He devotes the book to the Roman system of largitiones of the fourth century and examines the different occasions, groups, forms, and production of the largitiones (“Vergabungen”) as well as the essential organization of the system of largitiones.
The short introduction deals primarily with the history of research and Beyeler’s resulting questions that focus on the organization and recipients of the largitiones. The author divides the main part of his work into three large chapters. In the first chapter, which forms the basis for the following ones, he defines relevant terms such as liberalitas, largitio, alimenta, stipendium, donativum, and donum, distinguishing them from each other. Beyeler then investigates the organization of the largitiones system and the question of their production and distribution. Here, Beyeler was able to establish that a decentralized serial production of the objects must be assumed.
The second and most extensive chapter of the book covers all archaeological objects of the relevant period Beyeler could find that can be interpreted as largitiones. The author lists them in chronological order and assigns them to individual occasions. The list consists of mostly vota coin types (or their denominations and mints), which refer to reign anniversaries in their legend. Beyeler outlines the depiction and the legend of the coins only briefly. Unfortunately, he did not undertake an iconographic investigation. Beyeler interprets all of the listed vota coins as largitiones from the outset. However, this is by no means certain. The chronological processing of both largitiones and the vota coins encounters a fundamental problem here: just because coins can be assigned to a certain reign jubilee based on legend and/or depiction, this does not mean that they were produced exclusively for a donation distribution. The author probably subconsciously complies with the modern expectation that coins were only produced for certain events.
In a final chapter, Beyeler makes concrete statements about the recipients of the largitiones. He works out that not only people from the immediate imperial circle, i.e. senators and people of higher military rank, were honored for their loyalty with largitiones, but that people of lower rank, such as administrative officials and soldiers, were also honored. This broad analysis of recipient groups creates a good basis for further fruitful discussions.
A subsequent appendix contains a well-structured and detailed catalog of objects, though unfortunately it does not list the numismatic objects. The second part of the appendix in the form of a table containing the list of occasions is a useful addition for which every user will be grateful. The book ends with a third appendix that demonstrates the chronology of events.