[natroniks]

I always imagined teams of 2 working the forge. One man to hold the reverse, or "punch," die; a second struck down a hammer. The obverse, or "anvil," die was set into the anvil. That's what I gathered from the denarius of Titus Carisius, for instance: one hammer and one set of tongs, so two workmen. Maybe I'm mistaken. One thing I've wondered is how many mint men were required to supply the whole Empire. There was some good info about the tens of thousands required to mine the metals that went into coins. But how about the size of the labor force required to physically hammer out these circles of metal? For the minting process itself, the inscriptional evidence might be our best evidence. 63 men are listed - were they all employed at once, then? Interestingly, 63 is divisible by 3. Did it take 21 teams? For such a far-reaching endeavor, 63 people isn't much at all. Then again, for such a high-stakes position, the steps taken to secure both the labor and materials must've given these guys a high bar to meet. Perhaps even a bit of clout, even if only within the ranks of the servi publici.