Debasement of Roman Republican Denarii, Confirming Cicero

Discussion in 'Ancient Coins' started by Roman Collector, Apr 11, 2022.

  1. Roman Collector

    Roman Collector Well-Known Member

    "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 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."

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  3. kevin McGonigal

    kevin McGonigal Well-Known Member

    Thanks for the article. It would help if the article had cited the words of Cicero in the original Latin. Whatever the verb is, a translation of it as currency being "tossed about" seems meaningless. I would like to see what that verb was and how it was being used circa mid First Century BC and it what other contexts it was being used. Anybody have the text of Cicero's De Officiis and where in the text the "tossed about" verb is?
     
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  4. Marsyas Mike

    Marsyas Mike Well-Known Member

    I found this online:

    https://nodictionaries.com/cicero/de-officiis-3/80
     
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  5. Al Kowsky

    Al Kowsky Well-Known Member

    R.C., Thanks for posting this interesting article :happy:. I sold all but two of my Republican denarii, but the one pictured below I kept because the die work is excellent & the coin is in mint state. This issue is very common & falls into the date range expressed in the article when the debasement occurred. Most of these coins show little wear & most of them must have been found in hoards. They were issued to pay soldiers fighting for the Marian Party against the forces of General Sulla. For a long time it was assumed that Nero was the first to debase the denarius by 10%, obviously this wasn't the case :smuggrin:. I remember reading another article on Nero's debasement where a number of his denarii were also tested for fineness, & the sample tested turned out to be 80/85% pure :eek:. If I can find that article again I'll post it ;).

    Roma XIX, Lot 704 image.jpg
    Roman Republic, 83-82 BC. Quintus Antonius Balbus, Praetor. AR denarius: 4.07 gm, 19 mm, 5 h. Obverse: Laureate head of Jupiter. Reverse: Victory in quadriga holding reins, wreath, & palm frond. Crawford 364; Sear 279.
     
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  6. kevin McGonigal

    kevin McGonigal Well-Known Member

    Excellent leg work, Marsyas Mike. if you permit me, I'd translate those lines as something like, " so that the understanding of the coinage was so disturbed that no one was able to figure out just what he had". The verb "jactare" is usually translated as to throw or hurl as in to throw a javelin but as you can see it can also mean, disturb and I think the meaning is that something, maybe some debasement but maybe something else like the issue of plated coins or the coinage of the Italian socii still in circulation from the Social war had so disturbed the marketplace that the value of the coinage was in doubt. I am not so sure that the problem here is one of debasement. Being able to distinguish a pure silver coin (and no Ancient coin was really 100% pure) from a 90% coin fine is not so easy to do ( even if the marketplace knew enough about Archimedes to do a specific gravity test) so maybe the problem was light weight coins. If so, simply having and employing a balance scale might have turned the trick to ferret out the problem, the method Cicero mentions being used to solve the problem and restore confidence in the coinage.
     
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  7. Marsyas Mike

    Marsyas Mike Well-Known Member

    Well put. I know nothing for sure about any of this, but I've always thought that silver content of coinage being debased from say 95% to 89% would not really be noticed by the public. Light weight and plated coins, on the other hand, would be noticed (all those RR banker's marks).

    Here's one with all the plating stripped - from the post-90 B.C. timeframe - I'd bet somebody "jactare'd" this one after getting it in change! :rage:

    RR Fouree - Volteia (0).jpg
    Roman Republic Fourrée Denarius
    M. Volteius M.f.
    (78 B.C.)
    Rome mint (imitation)

    Head of Bacchus right, wearing ivy wreath / Ceres in a biga drawn by two serpents, cornucopiae behind, [M.VOLTEI. M.F.] in exergue.
    Volteia 3; Crawford 385/3.
    (3.01 grams / 18 mm)
    eBay Dec. 2017

    I was too young to notice, but after 90% silver coins were replaced by copper-nickel substitutes after 1964, the economy didn't tank (although I remember my grandma going through all her change and picking out the silver!). Of course the 20th century USA economy is not really comparable to ancient Rome (all that paper we use!).
     
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  8. ominus1

    ominus1 Well-Known Member

    ...one 'before(136BC) and a couple 'after'(82BC)..and a antique copy of Cicero's essays & select letters :) IMG_6477.JPG IMG_6479.JPG IMG_0654.JPG IMG_0655.JPG IMG_0966.JPG
     
  9. dougsmit

    dougsmit Member

    Am I correct that you see this use (iactabatur) meaning more negative than 'put out' as in 'issued' perhaps what we might say as 'dumped on the economy'? Do you have other texts that distinguish between a coin issue of larger than usual size ('flooded the market' rather than 'released')?

    Making no claim to anything approaching a scholarly study (and RR coins not being a particular interest of mine), it always struck me that the RR coinage as a whole showed the sort of variations one might expect if each issuing authority were allowed or required to hire staff or contract out coin production resulting in some issues being carefully produced, well struck from decent metal and others being slammed out on the theory that the requirement was to make coins in a certain quantity and it mattered not just how well it was done. This is just another example of the classic 'fast, cheap, good' triangle where extending one leg will, by necessity, alter the other two.

    I see you are using different dates than I found when I did my photos. I make no effort to keep up with changes anymore. Of my four coins below, only one is fourree which strikes me as about right for my collection and the overall state of circulating coin in troubled times.
    r26110rp0760.jpg r26130bb0240.jpg r26220bb2234.jpg r26310bb0133.jpg
     
  10. dltsrq

    dltsrq Grumpy Old Man

    I saw thIs article online the other day. I agree with the suggestion that plated counterfeits are a more likely cause of the economic disturbance suggested by Cicero.
     
  11. kevin McGonigal

    kevin McGonigal Well-Known Member

    No, I have no other texts on this subject other than the one cited by the OP.
     
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