A financial crisis briefly mentioned in Marcus Tullius Cicero's essay on moral leadership, De Officiis, has been solved by new scientific analysis of the composition of Roman denarii.
The coins of the period were analyzed and found to have a debasement 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 Romans may have lost confidence in the denarius when it ceased to be pure because they had used an extremely fine silver coinage. The level of debasement might have been less important than the realization that the coin was adulterated and no longer made of silver.
The discovery of this significant decrease in the value of the denarius has shed new light on Cicero's hints of a currency crisis in 86BC. We believe we have solved the puzzle of what the scholar meant when he said coinage was being tossed around so that no one would know what he had.
The anecdote describes how a proposal for currency reform was worked out by the tribunes and the college of Praetors and became hugely popular with the public.
What was the cause of the coinage being tossed about, and what were the solutions that Gratidianus took credit for?
A five-year research project funded by the ERC aims to increase our understanding of the economies of classical Rome and other Mediterranean states by analyzing the composition of their coins and cross-referencing the findings with the historical record.
Professor Kevin Butcher, Dr. Matthew Ponting, and Dr. Adrian Hillier are part of the research team.
The value of the denarius dropped from being a pure silver coin to being a fine silver coin after our minimally invasive sampling technique revealed a significant decline in the value.
The Roman state was in danger of becoming bankrupt in the years after 91 BC, according to Professor Kevin Butcher. The debt crisis of 89 BC was caused by the war between the Romans and their allies in Italy.
There appears to have been a crisis of confidence in the currency by 86 BC. Cicero said that the Roman tribunes approached the college of Praetors to resolve the crisis before Gratidianus claimed sole credit for the collective effort.
One theory is that Gratidianus fixed the exchange rate between the silver denarius and the bronze. He published a method for detecting fake denarii, which restored faith in the coinage.
Cicero's choice of words is too obscure for historians to determine what was going on. His purpose in writing about it was not to illuminate monetary history, but to show how a Roman magistrate behaved badly by taking credit for the work of others.
It has been thought that there was a slight devaluation of the denarius between 89 and 87, but was it enough to cause a currency crisis?
According to the results of the analysis, the financial difficulties experienced by Rome in these years led to a relaxation of standards at the mint in 90 BC, with the result that the silver content of the coinage declined in two stages, so that by 87 BC the coinage was deliberately alloyed with 5
Cicero said that the value of the coinage wastossed about because nobody could be certain whether the denarii they had were pure or not.
The standard of fineness rose sharply around the time Gratidianus published his edict, reversing the debasement and restoring the denarius to a high-quality currency.
The new scientific data suggests that the main aim of Gratidianus was to get rid of the silver and bronze trade.
After the civil war between Pompey and Julius Caesar, the Romans avoided debasing the denarius again. The Roman mint did not go as far as it did in the past.
The findings are part of a larger EU-funded study that looks at the financial and monetary strategies of Mediterranean states. A major coinage reform took place in 150 BCE. A detailed and reliable set of analyses of the chemical composition of all major silver coinages was provided by 64CE.
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