It's in debasement.
I knew about the AD coinage issue but this is the first time I've ever seen the BC/BCE coinage crisis.
From ScienceAlert, April 17:
Roman statesman and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote of coins with fluctuating value in his 44 BCE essay on moral leadership. Centuries later, this briefest of mentions fueled a longstanding historical debate – one that's just been answered by the coins themselves.
"Historians have long debated what the statesman and scholar meant when he wrote 'the coinage was being tossed around, so that no one was able to know what he had.' (De Officiis, 3:80) and we believe we have now solved this puzzle," says University of Warwick archeologist Kevin Butcher.
The Roman state was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy in 91 BCE at least in part due to the Social War against their Italian allies, who wanted citizenship along with the power to vote in Roman elections. By 89 BCE, Rome was mired in a debt crisis, and Cicero's passage suggested people were losing confidence in their currency, the denarius, too.
"Cicero related how the Roman tribunes approached the college of praetors to resolve the crisis, before Gratidianus claimed sole credit for the collective effort," explains Butcher.
"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."
"Unfortunately, Cicero's choice of words is too obscure for historians to determine exactly what was going on. His purpose in writing about it wasn't to illuminate monetary history; he was just using the incident as an illustration of a Roman magistrate behaving badly by taking credit for the work of others."
In part of an ongoing project, Butcher and colleagues analyzed the composition of the coins minted during these years. They used minimally invasive sampling techniques to prevent damaging the precious silver relics, bearing the heads of gods and Roman leaders, that were first introduced as currency in 211 BCE, valued at ten bronze assēs coins.....
....MUCH MORE
