Researchers Discovered Financial Crisis Has Been In Roman

In his 44 BCE treatise on moral leadership, Roman statesman and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote about coins having varying values. Centuries later, this flimsy reference sparked a long-running historical argument – one that has only recently been resolved by the coins themselves.

In 91 BCE, the Roman state was on the verge of bankruptcy, owing in part to the Social War with their Italian allies, who demanded citizenship as well as the right to vote in Roman elections. Rome was engulfed in debt by 89 BCE, and Cicero's passage suggests that people were abandoning faith in their money, reported Science alert.

University of Warwick archeologist Kevin Butcher said that gratidianus may have controlled the exchange rate between the silver and bronze denarius, according to one interpretation which had only recently been reduced in weight. Another is that he revealed a methodology for detecting counterfeit denarii, restoring trust in the currency.

Butcher and colleagues studied the content of the coins struck during these years as part of a larger investigation. They employed minimally invasive sampling techniques to avoid destroying the valuable silver artefacts, which bear the portraits of gods and Roman officials and were initially utilized as currency in 211 BCE and were worth ten bronze asss coins.

The researchers discovered that the denarius was made entirely of silver before 90 BCE, but that this percentage reduced by 10% merely five years later.

The impoverishment of the currency corresponds to additional evidence of financial conflict, such as the state's uncommon measure of selling public land to acquire grain in 89 BCE.

In 90 BCE, coin manufacturing increased dramatically, with 2,372 dies — the moulds used to create the coins – compared to 677 the year before and 841 the year after. All of this was most likely owing to Rome's financial difficulties during the Social War.