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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Drusus, post: 553792, member: 6370&quot;]All this is, of course, just supposition but I feel this could very well be the case. If you were living in a thriving metropolis...one would probably have little need to cut coins as a larger city or town (especially one with a mint and a thriving market) would probably have enough coinage while those in rural areas...if they even used coins at all...might find the need to cut a coin to half its value.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I have been reading a great comprehensive book called &#039;The later Roman Empire&#039; (not sure of the author) which presents a rather in depth study of day to day life in the later empire (what we know, what we think we can ascertain) and it often compares it to how things were in the earlier empire. This book put forth that in the Roman Empire, money was mainly used by those in areas where there were markets and actual jobs in which a person might get paid for their work...this book puts forth the idea that a large portion of the rest of the empire did not even use money...they traded services for good, goods for other goods, etc...</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Most people in the later empire (and indeed in the earlier empire) were what we might consider something like a serf...they worked the land of a land lord and were rewarded with what they needed to survive and little money changed hands. Even the military was paid, in a large part, with a mixture of goods and money.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>In the later empire, there were even laws put into place that forbid people from moving...in other words...they did not even have the freedom of movement if you were a part of a specific so-called free working class (they had a name for it, cant remember what it was). If they did not like their lot in life, they could not go and look for another arrangement. I believe it might have been under Diocletian and later emperors like Valentinian who even passed laws that, in essence, penalized a land owner for giving refuge and opportunity to another mans workers who left to find a better lot. I believe it was under Diocletian that laws were passed that even stated that a person could NOT change his profession.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>If your father was a baker...then you are a baker...and you could not, if you wished, become a wine merchant...people were locked into those jobs. One reason for this was to ensure these jobs always had workers. These came along with many other laws such as laws that forbid local leaders from leaving those less glamorous and more burdensome local leadership roles (where the real work and burdens were) for imperial positions (they all wanted imperial positions as they came with far less responsibility). If you were a local leader, you have to collect tribute, if your tribute did not meet the requirements, you have to pay the rest with your own money....things like this made local leadership roles less appealing (this was paid with gold, not money). Now of course the empire was large and it was never able to adequately enforce laws just like it was never able to adequately tax, keep a stable economy and was always quite inefficient...so there were always exceptions.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I am rambling but what I was trying to say was that common people in the empire, especially the later empire, were highly restricted in their freedoms. During much of the empire money would have been used by less people than it would be today. It became even less after the silver currency fell from use and the cheap bronze coins flooded the economy. These coins propped up sections of working class in urban areas but those few at the top still used Gold and silver and goods in transactions while the much larger lower rural classes seldom used money at all. This left the Urban lower class to use the more common copper bronze coins...and while cities grew much larger (and required a lot of coins), that was still a smaller percentage of the whole.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>The main point would be that rural economies, according to this book, were not based on money...as the rich used gold and silver, and the poor were of the slave class or the lower rural class which were possibily not paid in the traditional sense.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>So few of the common rural classes would be using a sestertius let alone half of one....but I am sure the extremely complex and ever changing economy of the Roman empire saw some rural people receiving and using money...and certainly we know that in the middle ages and beyond...even in early America where we cut silver Spanish coins into QUARTERS and EIGHTS (those who used money).... people cut coins to get lower values...it seems probably to me that there were people doing this during the time of the Roman Empire as well....but what we dont know about life back then far eclipses what we do know.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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