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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kevin McGonigal, post: 4806785, member: 72790&quot;]The lack of silver in circulation may have been brought about by a decline in discovery of and mining of new silver bullion. I have wondered about the relative stability of the prices of goods in the marketplace just as the amount of silver in the coinage was slipping. Not until the reign of Gallienus did the silver content fall to the point&nbsp; where the antoninianus was little more than a thin wash of silver and at that point there also seems to have been the beginnings of rampant inflation. It is possible that the reduced silver content of the coinage from the Second century AD on meant that it held its value because the value of silver had increased from the lack of new silver from mining, that is, with the increasing value of silver, a denarius of 45% silver&nbsp; under Caracalla actually had the purchasing power of an 80% silver denarius of Trajan. As for the disappearance of silver itself, some of it probably did go beyond Rome&#039;s borders to the barbarians and never returned to the Empire. Some was used for other purposes, decorative or votive, some buried and never recovered during times of more frequent disturbances, and some replaced in large transactions by gold as the Roman solidus was issued in much larger quantities than the earlier aureus. Without adequate and reliable resupply from mining the value of silver simply was too unstable to base a coinage on it and bronze and gold had to take its place in the later Empire and its continuation in the East as the Byzantine Empire.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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