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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;EWC3, post: 3541271, member: 93416&quot;]A few general thoughts</p><p><br /></p><p>1) Aristotle said something like - there are two sorts of people - those who think money is an idea and those that think it is a thing. I think that is connected to a rather permanent profound fact about human nature(s). Any who think money is an idea, under Septimus, would not worry about the silver content of coin</p><p><br /></p><p>2) Looks to me like Septimus was receiving better coin and paying out worse coin. The entire population of people who think ‘money is a thing’ would tend to dislike that. However, at least in the short term, soldiers, as the beneficiaries, would probably like it, out of self interest</p><p><br /></p><p>3) Keynes, in his ‘unpublished’ private papers on ancient weight standards makes a comparison between Solon and Lenin (!) He has Solon revaluing the drachm by 70/100 as a useful correction to the status quo (in his opinion). He has the more inflationary intentions of Lenin aimed at destroying the status quo. Both essentially doing the same thing - its just the degree to which it is taken that he comments on. I am rather sure Keynes would approve of Septimus.</p><p><br /></p><p>Getting to your actual question – it seems to me we have a similar sort of problem to the one I am trying to bring out on the thread about Roman weight. Greek and Roman sources tend to tell us a lot about political history, but very little about economic history. Chinese sources are the exact opposite. The only histories which tell us quite a lot about both are maybe the Indo-Moslems?</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyhow – it means we have to guess what happened.&nbsp;&nbsp; : - )</p><p><br /></p><p>My guess is that knowledge about the situation spread like wildfire. The soldiers did not care, and in the short term - the rest could not do much about it. In the longer term, citizens of the Western half of the empire increasingly turned to tax avoidance, which eventually led to the collapse of Roman rule in the West.</p><p><br /></p><p>Rob T[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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