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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Marsyas Mike, post: 25272721, member: 85693&quot;]Sorry, Rasiel.&nbsp; I didn&#039;t mean to mischaracterize your position. </p><p><br /></p><p>I completely agree with you on this - no individual had the power or resources to enforce demonetization even if they &quot;decreed&quot; such a thing.&nbsp; The use of money was much more <i>ad hoc</i> and &quot;off the books&quot; in antiquity than some seem to think.</p><p><br /></p><p>As it so happens, I was reading an article about coins in an archaeological context that, like the shops at Sardis, indicate a wide array of coins issued and used over the centuries.&nbsp; In fact, in Roman Egypt, when coins ran short, people used lousy lead tokens:</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;In addition to the billon and bronze coins, a large number of leaden pieces occurred. These I described fully in <i><a href="http://www.coinsofromanegypt.org/html/library/milne/milne_tokens.htm" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.coinsofromanegypt.org/html/library/milne/milne_tokens.htm" rel="nofollow">Num. Chron. </a></i><a href="http://www.coinsofromanegypt.org/html/library/milne/milne_tokens.htm" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.coinsofromanegypt.org/html/library/milne/milne_tokens.htm" rel="nofollow">1908, pp. 287 ff.</a>, and the conclusions there stated have been generally accepted—viz : that these pieces were a token coinage of low value, issued approximately between 180 and 260, to replace the bronze, which ceased to appear in any quantity after the former date. The tetradrachms still circulated, and there must have been something to represent the lower denominations, obols and chalki, which are shown by the papyri to have been in regular use. If these tokens, of which over 300 were found, are included with the coins, they bring up the average of specimens between Commodus and Gallienus to that of the earlier and later periods.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;Whatever the explanation of the situation in the fourth century may be, in the fifth everything points to a complete economic collapse. <b>There is not in the finds from Oxyrhynchus a single coin of recognisable official mintage belonging to the period between Honorius and Justinian. the only pieces that may be ascribed to this time are barbarous imitations of the issues of the Theodosian house, mere bits of bronze with degraded types, often reduced to a jumble of lines, and meaningless legends, sometimes nothing but dots and dashes. I have suggested (in a paper to appear in the </b><i><b>Journal of Roman Studies</b></i><b>) that these bits of bronze represent the &quot;myriad of denarii&quot; which was the unit of reckoning in Egypt at this period : the depreciation must have been somewhat parallel to that in Russia at the present day, as a late fourth century papyrus gives an equation of 2020 myriads of denarii to the gold solidus. Obviously it would not be worth while to spend any trouble over preparing a coin of such low value, which can hardly have had more meaning than a counter : in fact, the composition of hoards of this period suggests that the pieces of metal in them were treated as counters, since they consist of coins of various periods and countries, many worn to illegibility or clipped to fragments, with an intermixture of bits of bronze or even lead which show no stamp nor any sign of ever having been meant for coins.</b></p><p><br /></p><p>The only thing about these barbarous imitations which suggests that they may have been issued officially is the fact that they struck not cast. In the early part of the fourth century large quantities of cast coins were in circulation in Egypt, and the moulds from which they were made are frequently found : I described two groyps from Oxyrhynchus in <i>Num. chron.</i> 1905, pp. 342 ff. These were probably the work of forgers, who would find it a profitable occupation to make counterfeit coin when the coin had an appreciable value above its metal contents. But in the conditions of the fifth century it would have been a waste of energy for an Egyptian forger to cast, much more to strike, anything purporting to be a bronze coin.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p><b>THE COINS FROM OXYRHYNCHUS By J.G. MILNE</b></p><p><b><a href="http://www.coinsofromanegypt.org/html/library/milne/milne_CofO.htm" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.coinsofromanegypt.org/html/library/milne/milne_CofO.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.coinsofromanegypt.org/html/library/milne/milne_CofO.htm</a></b></p><p><br /></p><p>It is a very interesting article, and I hope it doesn&#039;t cause too much discouragement - there truly seems to be very little by way of an orderly official/demonetized process in the Roman world when it came to coins.&nbsp; Even if the Theodosian Code or other laws tried to do this, archaeology indicates that it was far less formal/legal than the decrees would indicate.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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