Septimius Severus' Debasement

Septimius, clever guy, increased army pay but devalued the denarius so much that his total ared forces payroll in silver was the same or slightly lower than those of Marcus Aurelius or Commodus. At least if the figures for army pay and denarius content by various sources such as Bland, Harl and those whose research they cite is to be believed.

It makes me wonder generally who figured out there was a debasement first? How did that news spread? Did the legionaries find out and what did they think of it? Was inflation immediate or slightly delayed?

 

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We have precious little information on purchasing power and inflation during any period of Roman history, and what little information we have is highly regional. Asking what a denarius would buy in early 3rd century Rome is like asking how much rent is in the US in 2019 - Do you mean in San Francisco Bay, or Po-Dunksville, North Dakota?

Debasement was a normal theme for silver coinage from the Republic until the system collapsed in the last half of the third century. In theory, the debasement was more or less irrelevant as long as the economy was strong, which was the case while Rome expanded until the time of Trajan, then consistently collected her taxes until the end of the Severan dynasty. Like the US dollar, the denarius was kept afloat mostly by faith in its status as "good money".

The joint threats of raids from barbarians across the entire north and the expansionism of Shapur I to the east depleted the abilities of the frontiers to pay taxes, which spurred further debasement to keep the troops paid so they could be marched off just to die on the battlefield or of plague. Runaway inflation took hold during the time of Valerian, as evidenced by the sudden disappearance of virtually anything that wasn't an antoninianus.

The progression of inflation is evident in the denominational structure of the ancient coins over time:
- Julio-Claudian bronzes are much more common than silvers, BUT Trajan ordered the melting and recoining of all pre-Nero denarii in circulation, so we don't really know how many were minted or circulated in the first place.
- All denominations are common from the time of Vespasian through Marcus Aurelius, but the as and dupondius become less common. Quadrans apparently stopped being made around this time.
- Denarii take over during the time of the Severans, but all denominations are made
- Denarius is replaced by antoninianus during reign of Gordian III; rarely issued after. As and Dupondius become much more scarce. Surface enrichment is needed by the time of Aemilian
- Valerian and Gallienus were last to issue general-circulation small denominations, although they are all rare compares to antoninianii.
- Aurelian reformed the currency and a tempted to reintroduce bronze denominations and denarii, but failed; the damage was irreversible.

 

It's not the prices so much but the amount of silver. While prices still fluctuated hard money is generally considered a solid baseline.

Antoninus Pius had a debasement from 2.5 to 2.25 grams 10%. Not unlike currently managed inflation especially considering the length of reigns. Septimius' debasement went from 2.15 grams to 1.48 grams. That's 30%. A lot steeper and much more likely to cause ripples in an economy.[/QUOTE]

When Valerian was captured and the Empire split in three it was virtually bankrupt. That is a topic in and of itself. How did the legions stay loyal with such debased money. But even Diocletian had trouble setting things back to normal. For that the Empire had to move to a gold/base metal system where the rich were paid and the rest had to do with fiat money.

 

Well, silver coins did not disappear entirely from Roman history after the collapse and the total economic inhalation that was the late 250's through 280's.

Diocletian tried hard to reintroduce a coin equal in weight and fineness to a denarius during the time of Nero...the argenteus.


GALERIUS as Caesar, AD 293-305.
AR Argenteus, 21mm, 2.7g, 12h; Rome, c. 294.
Obv: MAXIMIANVS CAES; Laureate head right.
Rev: VIRTVS MILITVM; The tetrarchs sacrificing over tripod before city enclosure with six turrets.
Reference: RIC VI Rome 29b, p. 353, r2.

Like a lot of other denominations created by Diocletian, it didn't really last long. Most of Diocletian's coin reforms were ineffective. But I bet you that during the decade and a half these coins were made, the troops must have been happy about being paid in silver over a bunch of devalued coins.

And don't forget the siliqua. About the same diameter as an old denarius too, but definitely thinner. These were made throughout most of the rest of the 4rth century, and I think maybe even into the early 5th century. Apparently they needed tons of these to pay the soldiers because most have edge cracks attesting to how fast they were being pumped out of the mint. There was little quality control here, so if you see one without edge splits you should probably buy it.


Valens, AD 364-378.
AR Siliqua, Treveri, 367-378.
Obv.: D N VALEN-S P F AVG; Pearl-diademed, draped, cuirassed bust right.
Rev.: VRBS ROMA; Roma seated left on cuirass, holding Victory set on globe in her right hand and spear in her left // TRPS•
Reference: RIC IX 27b and 45a.


Gratian, AD 367-383. AR Siliqua, 16mm, 2.2g, 12h; Trier mint, 367-378. Obv.: DN GRATIANVS P F AVG; Pearl diademed draped cuirassed bust right. Rev.: VRBS - ROMA; Roma seated left, holding Victory on globe and sceptre // TRPS•Reference: RIC IX 27f Trier.

 

I look at works that separate and report things like silver content or weight as an overall average for a long reign with skepticism. Commodus' denarii were looking pretty bad toward the end. Septimius' went up and down and varied by mint. Also, I doubt Septimius' coins were what made the soldiers like or dislike him. Their pay was not their only profit from being his troops. I suspect a soldier under Septimius was better off overall than one under Commodus and we don't even need to compare them to the army that supported Pescennius.

 

"Antoninus Pius had a debasement from 2.5 to 2.25 grams 10%. Not unlike currently managed inflation especially considering the length of reigns. Septimius' debasement went from 2.15 grams to 1.48 grams. That's 30%. A lot steeper and much more likely to cause ripples in an economy."

This caught my eye - where are you getting these figures from? The average weight of the denarius during Septimius Severus was 3.1g. This is easily verifiable. And, in any case, that would be a module reduction rather than debasement.

From my reckoning silver debasement from the time of Nero onwards was very, very gradual across all reigns. Only Nero and Domitian, briefly, stepped in with changes big enough that the public took notice. This is a strong indication that imperial policy reflected the actual state of the economy rather than the other way around. Much as they pretended otherwise these guys were trapped in the realities of their respective times and they made do with what they had at hand.

 

Something happened after the reigns of Phillip, Decius, and Gallus to destroy the monetary system as it existed - the smaller denominations were no longer struck in quantity and disappeared during the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus. The weakness of the Empire was exposed for all to see. As Gibbon wrote "The Empire of Phillip seemed just as strong as that of Augustus and Trajan" until the entire thing unraveled. The disappearance of the Provincial coinage in the East coincided with the decline of the wealthy class of city fathers who were responsible for the finances of their cities, who constructed public works, maintained the gymnasia, and were a throwback in a sense to the Hellenistic age. When these folks went bankrupt during the reigns of Gallienus and Valerian everything fell into chaos. Hence debasement became an empire-wide disaster.

 

Table 1 shows the fineness and the weight of silver denarii since the reign of the emperor Septimius Severus until the reign of the emperor Gordian III. A table like this is also published by Harl (1996). The results for the denarii from Antoninus Pius to SeptimiusSeverus are from Butcher & Ponting (2012). The result for the later reigns are from Walker (1978) with a 10% downwards correction as suggested by Gitler and Ponting (2003).

 

That is true, though a little off topic. I'm particularly interested in how debasement might be noticed and its effects on the economy. The later Roman silver tended to be isolated to Rome and other Western mints as well and probably wasn't used much for the pay of the legions or Imperial versus Urban expenditures.

 

That may well be. Though there are a lot articles on the subject, a lot by Roger Bland in particular, and the notion seems to be accepted by academics. I have seen references to Caley who did a really thorough job with specimens but usually only tested a few. I haven't gone aggregated the number of examples. If there are coins of Commodus with a fineness below 50% it would certainly throw a wrench in the works. The disparity of quality by mints also hasn't been addressed. Perhaps it was a lot of graft and corruption. The types of things Aurelian tried to deal with in part.

 

I feel that there was some small regular debasement through the reign of Commodus. Then a larger one by Septimius. After Valerian was captured and the Empire spplit in three all bets are off. That was a very different situation of critical emergency and clearly silver was hard to come for by Gallienus and his successors. Decius being killed in a battle against Goths probably didn't help either, nor Philip's indemnity to the Sasanians.

I wonder if Diocletian moved East not just to be rid of the Roman Senate but also because the best mines were now in Anatolia. Given the fact that the argentus didn't take perhaps there were more effective gold mines than silver ones in the 4th century. But that's another topic.

 

I found this graph about a year ago It does show something of the debasement of the Roman silver coins. The problem that we have is that our understanding of how the soldiers would have reacted to this debasement is very limited because it complicated by the limited amount of information we have on how these coins were used. This may seem like a silly comment but I am not even sure if we know how often the army got paid during the year, and this would have a direct bearing on the velocity of coin circulation within those regions dominated by the army as well as how fast the coinage would spread into the larger society. I am reminded of the situation that existed in most rural parts of the country. Farmers really only get paid once a year, when they sell their crops. For the rest of the year they would run up a tab with the local merchants and when paid would then pay them off. So for much of the year very little actual money would be circulating in these regions. It may be that the soldiers really did not get to see much of their money for long.
I should note that despite the debasement the coins up to the sole reign of Gallienus look like silver coins. This may have been good enough.Again we have very little information.

 

A few general thoughts

1) Aristotle said something like - there are two sorts of people - those who think money is an idea and those that think it is a thing. I think that is connected to a rather permanent profound fact about human nature(s). Any who think money is an idea, under Septimus, would not worry about the silver content of coin

2) Looks to me like Septimus was receiving better coin and paying out worse coin. The entire population of people who think ‘money is a thing’ would tend to dislike that. However, at least in the short term, soldiers, as the beneficiaries, would probably like it, out of self interest

3) Keynes, in his ‘unpublished’ private papers on ancient weight standards makes a comparison between Solon and Lenin (!) He has Solon revaluing the drachm by 70/100 as a useful correction to the status quo (in his opinion). He has the more inflationary intentions of Lenin aimed at destroying the status quo. Both essentially doing the same thing - its just the degree to which it is taken that he comments on. I am rather sure Keynes would approve of Septimus.

Getting to your actual question – it seems to me we have a similar sort of problem to the one I am trying to bring out on the thread about Roman weight. Greek and Roman sources tend to tell us a lot about political history, but very little about economic history. Chinese sources are the exact opposite. The only histories which tell us quite a lot about both are maybe the Indo-Moslems?

Anyhow – it means we have to guess what happened. : - )

My guess is that knowledge about the situation spread like wildfire. The soldiers did not care, and in the short term - the rest could not do much about it. In the longer term, citizens of the Western half of the empire increasingly turned to tax avoidance, which eventually led to the collapse of Roman rule in the West.

Rob T

 

One other point: I don't believe the average man on the street and certainly the average soldier looked at the money in the same way as those modern students who assay coins. Whose coins 'looked' vauuable? Whether tricks like surface enrichment were in use or not, the coins of the Severans as a whole looked like silver and conveyed as good a 'denarius' feel as did the late Commodus and Didius Julianus coins. Certainly there were some that knew the coins were missing some silver but what made more difference to most would have been the buying power. I doubt many people had a lot of experience with Marcus era coins by that time. Today, you have to be retirement age to have much experience with silver coinage made of silver. Marcus Aurelius died in 180; I was graduated from high school in 1964. 2019-1964=55 180+55=235 235 AD was the year the Severans ended. How many 73 year old men do you think were walking around discussing the state of the silver coinage? I suspect more attention was paid to whether or not bread was available at the usual price. I do wonder how the public received the switch over to the antoninianus. We are not aware of how people felt about the money in their purses. We should be careful not to read modern 'Bryan Dollar' attitudes (or 5th century BC either, for that matter) into the minds of the man on the Roman street. I do know that any people who had question about the value of Septimius Severus' coinage were well advised to keep it to themselves.

 

I certainly agree we have to be careful, but in the message you referenced two sets of attitudes, one of today and the other of the late 19th century. I would not judge either to be particularly useful as models for 3rd century Rome, but surely 19th century money itself was much more like that of ancient Rome, of the two?

The situation Jorg pointed to seems to me to be a rather decisive large debasement, that rapidly lead to the destruction of the denomination itself. And that is a pattern we seem to see quite a lot. For instance, the Shahi Jitals underwent a quantum drop in fineness, from about 70% to about 30% around 1000 AD. And thence forward dropped quickly to below 5% in some jurisdictions. We see something similar with the Western satrap coinage, which was very stable for centuries but debased rather rapidly under Gupta rule. Or for something different but similar, look at the weight reductions applied by Ilkhans after Ghazan, which once set in train, rapidly all but destroyed the intrinsic value of his dirhem. The UK 1920 reduction (et al) fits a similar pattern in some ways…..

There are counter examples to this, which we could discuss, but in general I seem to see a “first cut is the deepest” sort of thing being quite common. That is to say, a very decisive use of value reduction, no matter how visible to the (modern/untutored) naked eye, very often has seemed to trigger dramatic changes in the currency.

Rob T

 

RAG Carson in his book " Coins of the Roman Empire" page 234 states..." there is reason to believe that under Severus Alexander the denarius was tariffed at 50 to the aureus: and consequently, by the time of Trajan Decius, the equivilent of the aureus was now 50 antoniniani." If this happened this might explain the disappearance of the aes denominations. The main problem is that nowhere does he discuss the ratio of the sestertius to the aureus during these revaluations. if the sestertius dropped in value along with the silver coins thus becoming first a coin 1/200 to an aureus and then 1/400 to the aureus then their demise is pretty well a forgone conclusion. However even if the sestertius retained its value against the aureus, the aes coins were doomed as they would be competing with antoninianii which are basically double sestertii and the devalued older denarii which are now the equivalent of a sestertius.

 

The main questions for me would be how quickly the debasement took place, and what that did to the rate of inflation. If inflation was steady and predictable, people may not have been too concerned. The coins I carry around in my pocket are very much debased and are only worth 4-5% of the purchasing power those same denominations had 100 years ago. However, that means nothing to my personal standard of living. The only thing that really matters is how much I can buy with the coins, pieces of paper and blips on the computer screen that I get paid for the work that I do. I can’t imagine that citizens of Ancient Rome looked at things much differently.

 

Whoever created that graph deserves credit. Also, we might like to read the whole article. Please give us the citation.

 

I really cannot help there. I found it on an old power point presentation and I do not know much more beyond that.

 

I suppose what matters most was how the debasement was managed. In the United States silver was removed from coinage and as a backing for paper money over the ten year span of 1965-1974. Once complete the initial management was poor, there was too much money and inflation and interest rates become unstable to a harmful degree. However after the initial mishap the money supply has been managed at a rate of 3% debasement for annum and defenders of centrally managed money will defend this as perferable over the booms and crashed seen especially before 1929.
Given what we know about Septimius his goal was most likely to be getting more money, and more purchasing power into the hands of his soldiers. And it appears he was successful in this. Now maybe it was something done on borrowed time in that prices adjusted more slowly in the 3rd century Empire so Septimius could realize the short term gains with more limited consequences.