Get the News on Your Money

Think about it. A couple millennea ago communication was a little tougher than today. So the Romans came up with an ingenious idea. They printed news on their money. On the back side of their coins, to be exact.

According to Michael Grant, in his book The World of Rome:

. . . in the absence of modern media of communication, the only official announcements which the central government could be sure that very many people would see were those on the enormous network of official coinages that circulated throughout the empire. . . there was no better medium for the diffusion of news . . .

Grant says the Romans might issue as many as 150 new versions of a coin in a year. Nothing different on the front, but the hottest news on the obverse. Pretty dang interesting.