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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;EWC3, post: 3556336, member: 93416&quot;]Fascinating thread. I dug into the sources a little, (Cassius Dio and Herodianus) and as far as I could see nothing was said about the debasement there. Did I overlook anything? On the question - “Did the legionaries find out” it seems to me we are factually completely in the dark. My own guess is that such news would spread rapidly, in gossip, about how SS was raising all this new cash – mostly because, like Ksorbo, I think the citizens of ancient Rome were much like us, and for them too, this was an important fact that they would be keen to know about.</p><p><br /></p><p>On your second point, “what did they think about it?” we are on firmer ground. If the sources say nothing, it seems most likely most people did not care much – much as Ksorb says here:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Brings to mind a separate incident. As a sort of book end to the first. SS was in favour of a reducing the intrinsic value of cash in c. 200 AD, and the decision ultimately unravelled badly. There was a debate in England c. 1690 concerning whether to reducing the intrinsic value of cash which went the other way, the intrinsic value being rigidly maintained, (and arguably that decision unravelled badly too!). But during that English debate, a leading pro-reduction guy, Barbon, made the statement “Not one man in a thousand can tell you how many grains there are in a crown”. Maybe he was exaggerating, but still, its an interesting insight into what some would call economic complacency, that is perhaps a permanent part of the equation.</p><p><br /></p><p>Its interesting to ponder what Mattingly wrote about Septimus &amp; Co. (in 1928, but still defended in 1962). “the Government….did not sufficiently realise that it was only attempting to raise by an inadequate form of indirect taxation what it could not trust itself to raise by direct (Roman Coins p. 185)</p><p><br /></p><p>Rob T[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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