Roman Token in The Thames
We have an enlightening History course at Focus on Learning as part of our ‘English Plus’ series of courses featuring English with other subjects. We love to learn as much as we can about the past. It informs us of the way things are today, helps us avoid mistakes of the future, and is often just plain entertaining.
People are quite used to finding ancient Roman coins buried in various places across Europe. We all know that the Romans conquered everything and were notorious litterers. A 2012 find in New Londinium though, is a bit more interesting.
Near Putney Bridge in West London, pastry chef Regis Cursan, 37, found an unusual object at low tide. At first he thought the image on one side was of a goddess but he was put right when he donated the piece to the Museum of London.
What he took to be a coin was in fact a token called a spintria (plural: spintriae) used in transactions between Romans and sex workers (usually slaves) and was not considered money itself, but more closely related to a receipt. On one side is an image of the interaction the Roman would like to enjoy, the other features a Roman numeral displaying the price of the act.
Our Roman would have had to fork over the actual monetary amount beforehand to the brothel keeper who would provide the spintria. The token was then given to the slave, and once the service was completed it would be returned to the brothel keeper to pass on to the next customer.
This coin depicts an intimate encounter: a woman face down on a couch with a man on top of her. The price on the other side is XIIII (14) asses. A crude pun is not necessary here; that was actually the name of the currency: one unit as, two units asses.
Presumably the token was invented as a way to spare shy Romans from having to describe their desires out loud. We can only wonder what they would have done if they wanted to do something that hadn’t been minted.
Dated to around the first century AD, this is the first of its kind to be unearthed in the UK, though a few others have also been found across Europe. Other coins show that prices typically ranged from 1 as up to 16 asses. So whatever this one was, it was for the big spenders.
