Research team sheds light on Roman financial crisis
New scientific analysis of the composition of Roman denarii has brought fresh understanding to a financial crisis briefly mentioned by the Roman statesman and writer Marcus Tullius Cicero in his essay on moral leadership, De Officiis, and solved a longstanding historical debate. Researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Liverpool have analysed coins of the period and revealed a debasement of the currency far greater than historians had thought, with coins that had been pure silver before 90BC cut with up to 10 per cent copper five years later. Dr. Ponting at the University of Liverpool said: -The Romans had been used to an extremely fine silver coinage, so they may well have lost confidence in the denarius when it ceased to be pure. The precise level of debasement might have been less important to contemporaries than the mere realisation that the coin was adulterated and no longer made of true -silver-. Professor Butcher at the University of Warwick said -The discovery of this significant decrease in the value of the denarius has shed new light on Cicero's hints of a currency crisis in 86BC. Historians have long debated what the statesman and scholar meant when he wrote -the coinage was being tossed around, so that no one was able to know what he had. De Officiis , 3:80) and we believe we have now solved this puzzle. The reference is part of an anecdote describing self-serving behaviour by Marius Gratidianus, who took credit for a proposal for currency reform worked out jointly by the tribunes and the college of praetors and became hugely popular with the public as a result. But what was the cause of the coinage being -tossed about-, and what were the solutions for which Gratidianus took credit?
