Posted on 04/09/2022 8:05:00 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
New scientific analysis of the composition of Roman denarii has brought fresh understanding to a financial crisis briefly mentioned by the Roman statesman and writer Marcus Tullius Cicero in his essay on moral leadership, De Officiis, and solved a longstanding historical debate.
Researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Liverpool have analyzed coins of the period and revealed a debasement [sic] of the currency far greater than historians had thought, with coins that had been pure silver before 90BC cut with up to 10 percent copper five years later...
The reference is part of an anecdote describing self-serving behavior by Marius Gratidianus, who took credit for a proposal for currency reform worked out jointly by the tribunes and the college of praetors and became hugely popular with the public as a result...
"One theory is that Gratidianus fixed the exchange rate between the silver denarius and the bronze as (which had only recently been reduced in weight). Another is that he published a method for detecting fake denarii, and so restored faith in the coinage...
These findings are part of a larger EU-funded study that aims to examine the financial and monetary strategies of Mediterranean states from c. 150 BCE to a major coinage reform in c. 64 CE by providing a detailed and reliable set of analyses of the chemical composition of all major silver coinages of that period.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
They’ll be digging up hoards of USB thumb drives that once held bitcoin files, and everyone will wonder who buried them and why they never came back for ‘em. ;^)
Repeat after me boys and girls:
All fiat currencies eventually go to 0.
All of them. Government’s debase the currency to allow more spending. Thus inflation.
Now you understand why gold, silver, and cryptocurrency. They are beyond the power of governments to set a value on them. They cannot be debased.
Perhaps the Romans discovered the benefit of alloying silver with a bit of copper.
True, I am sure.
But the Romans cut the content of the precious metals as the economic times/greed* required, so the amount of silver in this case would fluctuate. This happened numerous times in the republic and later, the empire. By the time of Caracalla, the silver in a denarius was something like 5%.
* Emperors were fond of cutting the silver content so they could pay for lavish spending and paying off the Praetorians and army. More coins at the same value for less actual silver.
That’s correct in my opinion.
10% copper is not debasement. It is for strength and durability.
We do this in other industries as well such as semiconductors and steel. Alloys have always been used to improve characteristics of the pure metal whether its iron, silicon, aluminum, silver, and even gold.
Why are the ridges on the edges of dimes and quarters? Because they were originally intrinsically valuable silver. The ridges made it clear if silver were shaved off the edge.
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