Blood and Money. David McNally

spread money throughout rural areas, purchasing food, drink, and more. Money and military power were symbiotically related. We have noted that production of coinage increased dramatically in Athens at the end of the Persian Wars (479–431 BCE),¹⁰⁰ just as it did in Rome during the first two Punic Wars (218–214 BCE). Indeed, by the end of the sixth century, over one hundred mints were at work producing coins throughout the Greek world. By the second century CE, it is estimated that the annual budget of the Roman imperial state was around 225 million denarii, fully three-quarters of which went to pay the wages of the empire’s four hundred thousand soldiers.¹⁰¹

      Military requirements drove the spread of coinage, not only throughout the Roman Republic, Carthage, and the Hellenistic kingdoms established by Alexander the Great, but also in Persia and the Celtic states. In the case of Gaul, coinage was introduced as payment to Celtic mercenaries for service in the Macedonian armies of Philip II, Alexander III, and their successors. Not surprisingly, when they began to strike coins of their own, the Celts used Macedonian and other Greek coins as their models. Tellingly, they did so largely for purposes of financing their own armies as they centralized political power and undertook a concerted program of state building.¹⁰² Among the best-studied cases of the symbiosis of money and state building is Ptolemaic Egypt, which developed from Alexander’s conquest in 332 BCE. Following the conqueror’s death in 323, Ptolemy became governor (satrap), and over the course of more than a century, he and his three successors ruled Egypt without interruption, using monetization to promote state building.¹⁰³ Not that ancient Egypt had been unfamiliar with coinage, but its usage had been largely confined to Mediterranean trade and some large luxury purchases. What changed with the Ptolemies was the extent of cash transactions, as monetization joined hands with militarization. Once again, much of the process began with the hiring of mercenaries.