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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kevin McGonigal, post: 4194879, member: 72790&quot;]Actually I did not &quot;enjoy&quot; the book on the Roman market economy. I&nbsp; thought Temin did a pretty good job in establishing that Rome, for a while, had a market economy and that most Romans except for rural slaves, enjoyed a decent standard of living. As for the gyrations in the price of grain I think that self evident and did not need much amplification. I must admit I was somewhat disappointed that he spent very little time on monetary policy and the coinage, which brings me to ask of you and other readers a question about something I wrote above about the debasement of the silver coinage.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the First Century BC and through much of the First Century AD the denarius contained a bit under four grams of silver, slightly reduced by Nero. Prices in the market place seemed adjusted to that value. As we know the denarius was more debased by the latter part of the Second Century but levelled off for a while under the Severans at close to the fifty % fine level until mid century. The assumption is that this created a noticeable inflation with rapidly rising prices. The debasement part is easily ascertained from metallurgy but I am not certain about the inflationary increase in the price of goods in the market at that time. Later on, yes, but early Third Century not as much as some authors have concluded. I have wondered if prices might have remained relatively stable ( I don&#039;t know for sure that they did from say 150 to 250 AD) in that the coinage of AD 200-245 may have retained its buying value, despite the reduction of silver, because the price, the value of silver had increased from a diminishing supply. I have read that the mines were producing less and less silver as the Third Century went on and that this scarcity might have increased the value of silver to the point that a four gram double denarius of Gordian III of close to 50 % fineness may have had the purchasing power of a four gram 95% fine single denarius of Tiberius in his day. A doubling of prices over a period of two hundred years is not rampant inflation.</p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp;If so, while Roman debasement of coinage occurred, the hyper inflation which we assume happened circa 200 AD onward&nbsp; was not as noticeable as we believe and assume. I get the impression from the Temin book, and some more recent writings, that the Antonine plague of circa 160-170 AD and its economic and social dislocation had pretty much healed itself and there was a partial recovery of prosperity by the early Third Century. If so, that may be partially explained by the rising value of silver enabling the Roman state to issue silver of less fineness without wrecking the stability of the marketplace.</p><p><br /></p><p>I ask readers here if they have any information on price inflation from the first half of the Third Century and if it was not rampant, was it because the Roman silver currency, though debased, had not lost as much purchasing power as is commonly assumed.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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