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History
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From Rome to Riyadh: The Ancient Coin Hiding in Modern Money
The Roman Empire's influence survives not just in ruins, but in our wallets. The ancient silver denarius left an indelible mark on language, with its name echoing in the dinar and denar of nations across three continents, a 2,000-year-old legacy of a single word for money.
When you think of the legacy of the Roman Empire, you likely picture the Colosseum's weathered arches, the straight, stubborn lines of Roman roads, or the foundational legal concepts that still echo in modern courtrooms. But one of Rome's most enduring, yet overlooked, legacies is one you might find transacted in a market in Algiers, a bank in Belgrade, or a shop in Amman. It's a linguistic ghost, an echo of an ancient silver coin that has survived the fall of its empire by more than 1,500 years: the denarius.
The Silver Standard of an Empire
First minted around 211 BC during the Second Punic War, the denarius was a small silver coin that quickly became the backbone of the Roman economy. Its name is derived from the Latin "deni," meaning "containing ten," because it was originally valued at ten asses, a smaller bronze coin. For nearly five centuries, the denarius was the standard coin of trade, taxation, and military pay across a territory that stretched from Britain to Mesopotamia. It was, in its day, the closest thing the Western world had to a reserve currency.
The coin's purity, however, was not as constant as its presence. As the empire faced economic strain and political turmoil, emperors began debasing the denarius, mixing the silver with less valuable metals. This slow decline in purity mirrored the decline of the empire itself, a physical manifestation of a failing state. Yet, while the coin eventually vanished from circulation, its name had become too powerful to disappear.
A Word's Journey Through Empires
The survival of the denarius as a word is a story of cultural and linguistic transmission. As the Roman Empire split, the name persisted in the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire as the Greek dēnarion. But its most significant leap came with the rise of another empire. The early Islamic Caliphates, expanding across North Africa and the Middle East, absorbed vast territories previously under Roman or Byzantine influence. They needed a standardized currency of their own.
Around 696 AD, the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan undertook a major currency reform. He introduced the first gold coin of the Islamic world, and for its name, he borrowed from the well-established local terminology. The Latin denarius, filtered through Greek and Syriac, became the Arabic dinar (دينار). Though the metal changed from silver to gold, the prestigious Roman name stuck, lending the new currency an air of legitimacy and continuity.
"The Arabs of the Caliphate adopted the word, perhaps through Aramaic, and it came to be the name of their principal gold coin." - Online Etymology Dictionary
From there, the dinar spread with the influence of Islamic civilization. For centuries, it was the dominant currency of trade and culture in the region. Its name became synonymous with money itself.
Echoes in Modern Wallets
Today, the direct descendants of the denarius serve as the principal currency for millions. Nine countries use a form of the "dinar" as their national currency: Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Serbia, and Tunisia. Across the border from Serbia, North Macedonia uses the "denar," a name that hews even closer to the original Latin pronunciation.
But the legacy doesn't stop with official currency names. The denarius also embedded itself so deeply into the consciousness of the Latin-speaking world that it evolved into the generic word for "money" in several Romance languages. When someone in Spain talks about dinero, in Portugal about dinheiro, or in Italy about denaro, they are unknowingly invoking the name of that same small silver coin their Roman ancestors used to buy bread, pay taxes, or receive their wages as a legionary.
It's a quiet testament to the immense gravitational pull of Roman culture. The next time you hear the word "dinar," remember its incredible journey: from a silver coin in a Roman soldier's pouch, through the courts of Byzantine emperors and the gold treasuries of Arab caliphs, to the modern-day economies of nations half a world away. The empire is long gone, but in our language of money, a piece of Rome lives on.