Fig. 1. The decline of the silver content of Roman coinage, as...

Fig. 1. The decline of the silver content of Roman coinage, as envisaged in Haines 1941: 47.
brought about the collapse of theroman monetary system through its progressive debasement,
so that financial chaos ensued.24
As with so many features of theromanempire, its monetary system is seen as the creation
of Augustus, whose wisdom and foresight remained unmatched by his successors. Augustus
has become the standard inroman imperial numismatics, the benchmark against which the
performance of all others is measured.his coinage is seen as ‘good’ money, replete with natural,
intrinsic value.25indeed, a synonym for theroman imperial monetary system up to the middle
of the third century is the ‘Augustan system’ or ‘Augustan coinage’: an interlocking system of
denominations in high quality gold, silver, brass and copper.26it is this system that is described
as being ‘manipulated’ or ‘adulterated’ by Augustus’ successors, so that to describe change in
roman currency is to describe the process by which this ‘once splendid coinage of imperial
rome’ was despoiled.27
Kevin Butcher
24Petit 1974: 198-201. Some have, however, questioned
whether inflation was high, e.g., Corbier 1985.
25‘true money’: Wassink 1991: 468.
26Sydenham 1919; Callu 1969: 482; Walker 1978: 110;
Casey 1980: 11; Wassink 1991: 470, 473; Harl 1996: 73-96;
Hitchner 2005: 211; on the interlocking system, see Harl
1996: 72-73. For a critique of the concept of an ‘Augustan
system’ applying to gold and silver, see Butcher and Ponting
2015.
27Sydenham 1919: 129.
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There is certainly no avoiding the fact that a denarius of the early first century AD was made
of pure silver, whereas a radiate or antoninianus of Claudius II (AD 268-270) is almost pure
copper. The seemingly hard evidence can be tabulated (e.g. Harl 1996: 127; 130) or displayed in
graph form, usually showing the silver content of the coinage through time sloping downwards,
ever more rapidly, towards oblivion (e.g. Casey 1980: 10; Duncan-Jones 1994: 226; Rathbone
1996: 327). I choose here an early example of the genre from Haines 1941 (Fig. 1). A better
visual metaphor for imperial Rome’s decline would be difficult to find; and, whether by accident
or design, the word used to describe the apparently progressive alloying of silver with copper in
the coinage is almost invariably ‘decline’.28the reasons for the debasement can still be debated
(e.g. Lo Cascio 1981) although the majority view is that the alloying was a short-sighted policy
conducted by bankrupt rulers that led to the currency losing its value, culminating in the third
century in the ‘Augustan’ currency’s ‘collapse’.29the trajectory of the silver coinage thus seems
to mirror the fortunes of theromanempire itself, and, as we have already seen, the consequences
are generally regarded as having been profound.
When it comes to the precise cause of the devaluations, however, the accounts tend to
become less certain. Sometimes the coinage is said to have lost value because it became
debased (a ‘metallist’ perspective, where coins have value because they are made of valuable
commodities); at other times it is said to have become debased because it lost value (for
example, because too much of it was in circulation, or, less commonly, because the price of
silver rose).30In the latter scenario, debasement was simply a way of enabling the State to
produce more coins.31Scholars have searched the literature for contemporary references to
hyperinflation and the economic crisis accompanying the debasements, but there is precious
little that does not require inference or emendation to make it fit. If there was high inflation in
the period from 215 to 260, the Romans seem to have been uninterested in recording it.32hard
evidence, in the form of price data, does not match the period of debasement.33A case can be
made for a rapid rise in prices in Egypt under Aurelian in AD 274-5 and before Diocletian
issued his Edict on Maximum Prices (AD 301), but these events comeafterthe main period
of debasement (AD 194-270).34This would seem to argue against a link between fineness and
inflation, favouring instead a link between quantity and inflation or some other factor. But
from the comments in many accounts, both recent and older, it would appear that there are
difficulties in separating the two, despite the fact that the two positions represent fundamentally
DEBASEMEnTAnDTHEDECLInEOFROME
28e.g.harl 1996: 126. ‘Decline’ and ‘fall’ are terms that
have been used in titles concerning the debasement of
roman coinage since at least the time of Mommsen 1851,
e.g. Oman 1916;haines 1941; Pense 1992;verboven
2007.
29‘Collapse’: Grierson 1975: 22; Walker 1978: 136; Casey
1980: 11; Potter 1990: 34; Wassink 1991: 483; Harl 1996:
126; Christol 1997: 164.
30A ‘complex’ problem acknowledged by Crawford 1975:
567, 590-1, who there tended towards the first option while
not entirely excluding the second: ‘iconclude that in a
world where a precious metal coin was a piece of bullion an
increase in the supply of currency did not necessarily lead
to inflation ... in the third century A.D. the reduction in the
purchasing power of the silver coinage was the direct result of
its declining intrinsic power’. See also Estiot 2012: 553-4.
31Heather 2005: 65. The argument is certainly plausible.
however, if the coins are devalued as a result, doesn’t that
reduce the overall quantity of money in circulation?
32Link between debasement and inflation: Crawford 1975
(above, n. 29); Walker 1978: 109, adding ‘we have no
evidence that it was realised that debasement might in the
long term be economically harmful’; Mann 1986: 287-288,
accepting a rise in prices, though qualifying this by stating
‘it is difficult to be precise about when or by how much’;
Tainter 1988: 137 arguing for inflation, ‘although good data
are lacking’.
33Wassink 1991.
34Duncan-Jones 1994: 26-7 and Rathbone 1996 and 1997
set out some of theegyptian evidence for episodes of price
inflation, particularly in AD 274-5, but Egypt had its own
silver coinage, changes to which do not parallel changes to
imperial coinage. See also Corbier 1985 and 2005b: 425-8.
185

different understandings of the nature of money.35it would appear that the legacy of earlier
thinking about the decline ofroman coinage is not easily discarded.36
coinage has not always occupied a central role in accounts ofroman decline, and the tenor
of modern accounts is very different from earlier ones.indeed, the earliest students ofroman
imperial coinage were not much interested in change.the scholarly endeavours of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries focused on two main approaches to the material: one, concentrating on
coins as money, pursued through ancient texts, mainly by philologists and scholars of literature; and
the other, concentrating on coins as mementoes of illustrious historical figures and as illustrations
of antiquity, pursued through study of the coins themselves, by antiquarians. One might have
expected those interested in coins as money to be alert to change, but they were mainly concerned
with delineating a fixed system and defining monetary terms found in texts rather than charting the
evolution of a system. Antiquarians, on the other hand, sought to bring dignity to ‘medals’, as they
called their coins, and the study of these objects as money was regarded as sordid.37
the lack of interest in change can be explained in part by the confusion about the identity and
function of the objects that we now callroman imperial coins.38By the early seventeenth century
there was general agreement that they were monetary objects and not commemorative medals,39
but there remained uncertainty as to what denominations they represented. It was difficult for
the early savants to assemble enough material to conduct a meaningful survey of weights, and
to compensate for the even more meagre information about fineness it was generally assumed
that gold and silver were of high purity, at least until the time of the obviously base issues of
the third century. Despite all the doubts, some general pattern gradually became discernable:
therepublican weights of the gold and silver coinage had been abandoned for lighter ones
under eithernero or Vespasian, and there had been a debasement under Septimius Severus or
his successors, leading to the coinage of the mid third century becoming little more than billon.
Debasement was therefore understood as something that had happened comparatively rapidly,
or at least over a period not longer than about thirty or forty years and, for the few scholars who
ventured to think about the reasons, a link with expenditure during the frequent wars of the
period seemed plausible.
During the eighteenth century more systematic studies of weights emerged, and with it a
clearer understanding of the denominations. Johannes Eisenschmidt’sDe ponderibus et mensuris
veterum romanorum, first published in 1708, provided one of the first attempts to outline the
‘decline’ of imperial silver: therepublican weight for the denarius had survived up to the end
of Augustus’ reign, after which there was a decline in weight, untilnero had reduced its weight
to an eighth of an ounce. Afternero the denarius had remained stable until the joint reign of
Balbinus and Pupienus (AD 238), who had adulterated the silver with base metal.40thereafter the
Kevin Butcher
35Martin 2014: 143.
36One way of attempting to reconcile the two positions is
to claim that debasement facilitated increased production,
because that way the quantity of coinage was no longer
constrained by the supply of precious metal, as proposed by
Hitchner 2009 (though there the argument favours stability
over inflation).
37this approach had been pioneered byeneavico in his
Discorsi di M. Enea Vico parmigiano sopra le medaglie degli
antichi(1555). Joseph Bimard de la Bastie, in his introduction
to the 1739 edition of Louis Jobert’s popular handbook,
La science des médailles, sums up the antiquarian attitude
in his comment on Louis Savot’s enquiry into the function,
metrology and metallurgy of ancient coins,Discours sur les
medalles antiques(1627). Bimard recognized Savot’s work as
an ‘excellent book: but this clever man was content to study
medals exactly like coins; that is to say, that he envisaged
them from the least noble and least useful point of view from
our perspective’ (Jobert 1739: xvi).
38Erizzo 1559: 35-6.
39Savot 1627: 1-42.
40these imperial colleagues have never fully been able to
escape accusations that they helped to destroy the currency;
see below.
186

coinage was further debased until the time of Gallienus and Postumus, after whom the currency
collapsed. Eisenschmidt is among the first to outlin