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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Heliodromus, post: 7776575, member: 120820&quot;]I just finished reading Bastien&#039;s &quot;Imitations of Roman Bronze Coins, AD 318-363&quot;, linked above, and was pretty disappointed. In particular, if you&#039;re looking for any reasoned discussion of *why* counterfeits were produced, you won&#039;t find it here.</p><p><br /></p><p>The first 30 pages of the article give an overview of the types and (&quot;epidemic&quot;) waves of imitations produced in this period, and notes that each of these waves follows an official coinage reform. It&#039;s then only in the last 3-4 pages of the article (&quot;etiology&quot;, p.171) that Bastien discusses the cause of these epidemic waves, but even here there is no discussion of alternate theories since his starting point is a flat assertion that it was due to shortages of official coinage.</p><p><br /></p><p>Bastien supplies a few brief hand-wavy explanations of why there may have been shortages (without bothering to provide any evidence that shortages in fact existed), such as withdrawal of the prior coinage, or a reduction in mint productivity, before finally changing his tune and concluding instead that shortages (still not proved to have actually existed) were deliberate as an inflation fighting measure.</p><p><br /></p><p>Of course inflation was rampant during this time, and the coinage reforms were all reactions to this, withdrawing older low value coins and replacing them with new high value ones, sometimes with increased silver content to justify having done so. However, an assertion that the Romans were using monetary supply (amount of money in circulation) as an anti-inflationary tool is a bold claim that would need some evidence, which Bastien does not provide.</p><p><br /></p><p>Oddly, Bastien does not even consider, let alone reject, the rather obvious alternate (or minimally additional) profit motive for counterfeiting, or that the inflation-induced face-value-hiking nature of these reforms would provide the exact incentive for associated counterfeiting. He does note that the majority of Fel Temp counterfeits were the highest value (and highest percentage silver content) Galley type, without any apparent awareness of this undermining his argument of this being coinage of necessity rather than profit driven.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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