The Acceptance and Value of Roman Silver Coinage in the Second and Third Centuries AD

The debasement of imperial silver currency in the third century AD is one of the factors traditionally thought to have contributed to the collapse of the Augustan monetary system, which in turn is often regarded as part of a broader crisis. A comparison of the fineness and weight of imperial silver coinage with ancient sources which describe the changing role of argentam and nummularii, the primary institutions for currency exchange and assay, reveals several important differences between the reaction to currency manipulations of the central government in the mid- to late second century as compared with those pursued almost a century later. However, if the value of imperial currency was partly or wholly related to its acceptability to coin-users, then the abundance or paucity of information from contemporary monetary experts may have had considerable influence upon the potential for wider economic crisis. A case can be made that this is what happened in the third century: in the face of increased efforts to secure over-valuation of currency, independent exchanges and assayers were crowded out of local markets. Changes to monetary institutions and their role within the monetary system of the Late Principate, may also help explain why the kinds of economic consequences which seem to have characterised the third century were not produced earlier.