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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;curtislclay, post: 8151680, member: 89514&quot;]What about Mommsen&#039;s explanation of these restored legionary denarii of Mark Antony, which seems to me convincing, unless it has been refuted by recent research that I haven&#039;t yet read:</p><p><br /></p><p>Restored silver coins were usually replacements for originals that the government had decided to withdraw from circulation, because debasement had occurred so that the old coins now contained more silver than the current ones, and a profit could be made by melting them down and restriking the same metal at the new reduced standard.</p><p><br /></p><p>Dio Cassius reports that around 107 AD Trajan &quot;melted down all the worn out coinage.&quot; This was probably the occasion of his issue of restored denarii copying a large number of Republican coin types.</p><p><br /></p><p>But Trajan, as far as we know today, did not restore Mark Antony&#039;s legionary denarii, while in contrast only that one type was restored by Marcus and Verus between 161 and Verus&#039; death in 169. Mommsen&#039;s explanation: Trajan omitted Mark Antony from his recoinage, so didn&#039;t withdraw or restore that type, because Antony&#039;s denarii were known to contain less silver than any other Republican denarius type, so no satisfactory profit could be made by recoining their metal at the time. But by the 160s the denarius standard had fallen further, making it profitable for the emperors to withdraw the surviving legionary denarii and recoin their metal, an operation that they commemorated by selecting one of the relevant legionary denarius types to restore.</p><p><br /></p><p>Two tests which could either confirm or refute this explanation: the amount of silver in a denarius must have fallen considerably between c. 107 and the 160s AD; and hoards buried after the 160s should contain a reduced percentage of original legionary denarii of Mark Antony.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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