On a mildly interesting side note, one of the Roman coins I own, a denarius minted under Hadrian, is clipped, which, if you are unaware, is a common practice throughout history wherein someone would snip off a small piece of a coin to melt down the precious metal and (hopefully) be able to pass on the rest of the coin at full value. I suppose that makes it less valuable to most collectors but personally I find it far more valuable to me, having that little connection to what was almost certainly a boring, everyday action for whoever did it.
This why U.S. dimes and quarters have reeding around the edge, specifically to stop people from shaving or trimming a thin piece of silver off, and then passing the now underweight coin on to an unsuspecting person or merchant. With the reeding around the edge, anyone can see with a quick glance that the coin hasn't been shaved or trimmed. Even though dimes and quarters no longer are made from silver, they still retain their reed edging.
His book delves into how much money the Romans made - good stuff. I love me some financial history. Money is at the root of most large historical events.
YUP.....root of all evil AS W E L L .......covetousness, lust and thievery, for nearly 6000 continuous years, with only a few hundred years of PEACE , where no wars/murders, pillaging, raping, stealing taking place. WE HAVE A VIOLENT HISTORY,.. this end is near. GLOBALLY .
@@dickfacepeterson money is the most powerful tool. It splits families apart and has neighbors wage war on each other. You can comfortably have enough screwdrivers but some people will never be satisfied with their amount of money. People lust for money/valuables like nothing else
Welcome to the world of air conditioning in Florida… 8 year 4 year apprenticeship. Finally realized I need my contractors after changing companies 6 times for false promises. I’m always number 1 or 2 in revenue. Hardly any call backs. Customer satisfaction is an always. I’ve got the money put away and a couple good people I’ve met along the way. We’re hopefully starting this year. I should have my license by April
This was a really fun video to make! Thanks for the opportunity for joining you in this presentation. The romans and the mistakes they've made with their coinage have much to teach us!
Love both of your channels and Classical helped me buy my first coin (Bronze Domitian) so i was quite upset when there was no mention of him even though I have been told he was very skilled economically and the only Roman emperor to fix inflation.
Here is another topic suggestion - at what point in time did Latin cease being the spoken language of commoners? I suspect that it continued to be the official language for a while after the general population started using early Romance languages or the languages of invading tribes. I would restrict my question to only the western empire as I suspect Latin continued to be used widely in the east.
Latin withered away by evolving into the romance languages - slowly - by at least 800. But Greek, not Latin, was the language of the Eastern Roman Empire from very early on.
In the east the common people spoke Greek even when the empire was whole. Latin was the administrative language until 7th century and then was replaced by Greek as well
Yes, I would love a video discussing the written and oral languages of ancient Greece and Rome! I'm also interested in how and why Latin stopped being used by commoners, but was still used in the catholic liturgy for centuries after the collapse of Rome.
Historian Norman F. Cantor in his "Medieval History" says that the Emperors were unaware that lowering the silver content of coinage would cause severe debasement of the currency. He remarks: "They [the Emperors] simply did not understand such things as inflation". That video clip insert is especially informative.
So no Medieval predecessors to Gresham, with his law articulated in 1558 (bad money drives out good)? Have to think some others had observed such a phenomenon before Sir Thomas Gresham... Otherwise, I believe a few later Emperors did make an attempt improve the content of coinage, like Aurelian and Diocletian, but met mixed, little or no success (like Diocletian forced to back away from such reforms, and try instituting price controls instead).
@@michaeldunne338 A better formulation of Gresham's law is that overvalued money drives out undervalued money. If a pence made of nickel is valued the same as a pence made of gold, nobody would spend a gold pence when a nickel pence would do.
Oh! The light bulb suddenly went on! I had always heard that debased Roman silver coins had a “wash” of silver over a mostly base metal core. I wondered how they did that without knowledge of electroplating. Aha! They didn’t add silver to the exterior of the coin! They removed copper from the exterior of the coin, leaving silver residue! Brilliant! Thank you for the edification!!!
We do it still in jewellery. Just heat up the silver bullion and throw it in acid repeatedly. Heat+ acid will eat away copper and leave silver on surface.
@@KK-xz4rk Ok, just to make sure I understood correctly. You have a copper-silver alloy, and the acidbaths and heating removes the copper from the alloy, so that only the silver remains?
@@AndDiracisHisProphet No. Acid with the help of heat removes copper only from surface. Inside its the old copper mix but on surface the copper is dissolved and only silver remains so it looks like its made from pure silver. Because of it many viking age coins have small nicks in them. It was a custom to thrust coin with a knife point so trader could see if coin had different alloy inside.
Same for the british pound, and the canadian dollar, and the australian dollar, and just about every other currency on earth. Some worse, some not as bad, but there is significant inflation across the board and it isn't just a US issue.
And the ignorant will continue to blame it on greedy capitalist for goods and services getting more expensive rather than the governments printing too much much money which debases the currency and makes debt easier to service.
A cool side note: In the mid 3rd century CE, the Romans had a special coin called the double sestertius which was obviously twice the value of a normal sestertius and was meant to weigh twice as much. I've got Postumus' double sestertius overstruck on top of an old Antoninus Pius sestertius. In the 100 years between the two emperors the coin had lost so much value, that a Pius sestertius weighed as much as a Postumus double sestertius.
@@danksmemington362 They're interchangeable, and scholars use both depending on their preference, although the latter has an odor of political correctness, and is slightly more clumsy.
small note, but I always appreciate your ads. simple, clean, straight to the point. you always mention the ways whatever it is that you're advertising has helped you as well. i enjoy that!
I am amazed how there are such rich and informative TH-cam channels like this one that are greatly not being noticed by the mass. You deserve more attention.
I'm currently reading The Changing World Order by Ray Dalio. It's amazing how throughout history empires rise and fall for reasons that are quite similar. I love how the laws of economics are consistent throughout time.
Well if you believe in simulation theory then essentially the Romans are running a simulation currently and we are just about 40 years past the collapse of Rome
Thanks for bringing on Classical Numismatics! He's a great creator and I only found you after I found him. So it's fun to see you collabing! Thanks to both of you for your channels!
Lessons: Uncontrolled government spending, uncontrolled creation of money, and their resulting inflation are all bad news and price controls don't work.
@@lisa5249 All price control schemes "help the public" according to the blokes devising them. That they have never worked and have always caused further damage to the people they ostensibly tried to help is, by now, an undeniable fact of life. What cannot quite be scientifically explained yet is why some people are convinced price control schemes "will totally work this time".
Please make more videos about economics of rome and more about coins. I wish this video went on longer. Would love a part 2 or 3 or 4 of something like this. pls more
Very good video! At one point the situation got so bad that the Roman government refused to accept its own coins, and demanded that taxes be paid in bullion.
Hello Doc. I was hoping that your book would arrive from the shop before christmas, but i got it a couple of days ago after all the holidays. So now i can inform you that a copy has found its way to a bookshelf in the Swedish countryside.
On a similar topic, I read that in the years after the death of Alexander, a half talent would support 1 soldier in the field for a year and Ptolemy stole hundreds of thousands from Cleomenes. At the time if you knew how much money Ptolemy had, you know what he was capable of doing.
The direction of causation is hardly clear cut. It would be more accurate to say that when everything is being destroyed a monetary system is not likely to remain stable either.
Because we have internet the US is much worse than the roman empire ever was. In the next couple decades we will probably see things unfold and further degrade until the US splits into multiple countries doing their own thing. The left/right ideological differences are too much to get past , not to mention the difference in culture of the many people who live in America
The late Roman empire was not covered in this video, where the narration ends at Diocletian. From Diocletian onward, the empire experienced a century of relative peace and prosperity, and about 3 centuries in the eastern provinces.
Part of the issue with the Roman Empire's economy is that it required, essentially, conquest and slavery to grow and sustain - and this includes precious metals. Once they hit the proverbial high water mark and weren't conquering everyone else around them, a lot of economic problems logically followed. This isn't to suggest that conquest and enslaving everyone else is a good solution or anything, just... it is what it is.
The Roman empire didn't do much conquering after Augustus at all. That couldn't have been a great source of income long term, not to mention how expensive military adventures were. The great conquests of the late Republic were conducted more out of strategic concerns by the Senate, or individual wealth and political accolades of the commander. Imo
@@histguy101 First off, yeah it did a lot of conquering after Augustus. Second, I'm not saying it was a huge part, but it was indeed a reality - free labor and free wealth via looting subjugated peoples and areas was a thing. When they hit peak size and the momentum started to roll back a bit, things got a bit tighter for Rome obviously. And finally the other thing that comes to mind is, giving citizenship to all Romans in all the provinces meant, essentially, less cheap labor to exploit for the wealthy, and this meant more bureaucracy to obtain taxes from its free people, a process which eats into revenue. This also lines up with the fresh Christianity on the scene which basically meant now-Christian Romans couldn't other Christians, which cut off more cheap labor paths. Plus plagues, so labor was getting more expensive and/or harder to come by. So on top of coin debasement and inflation, there were labor shortages, food shortages, lack of exploitable cheap manpower, people pulling out of the urban areas and taking their wealth/labor to country estates (making them harder to tax). It's a big soup of things, and logically the decline of unimpeded military conquest did *not* help the situation, from Rome's economic standpoint.
There used to be no such things as exchange rates and foreign coins were accepted everywhere. People had tiny portable scales to weigh coins to determine the value. In fact, the US silver dollar was based on a Spanish coin, which was chosen for it made commerce easy for the little guy, and yet was a good store of value.
If all this doesn't sound scarily familiar to you, you either haven't been paying enough attention to politics or you are part of problem and partially to blame for the next civilizational breakdown and dark ages.
Great job, you nailed the most salient points. The conclusion was a bit abrupt though: "and the economy limped on..." Could've talked about the consequences of all this: Roman middle class decimated, taxes raised through the roof, tyrannical tax collectors became more feared than barbarians, and peasants started selling their own children into slavery.
Roman citizens (those who ACTUALLY lived in Rome) didn’t pay any taxes. They were given a “dole” from the state. Only the Roman provinces distant from Rome paid taxes.
@nuovissimi Same reason politicians today make bad decisions or rather decisions bad for the bigger picture, public image. Keeping the citizens happy and trusting in you to lead is extremely important i imagine.
Seems like the better plan would have been to cut the provinces loose to be their own "states" and thus force Italy to be financially solvent on its own. Of course the states would likely be sympathetic and therefore easily reconquered later on.
Until the face value became less than the metal value - and they were melted down into silver bars (illegally under US law). The same thing happened to the Italian copper centime (1/100th of a Lira) - the Mafia filled a ship with them and shipped them to Japan. A copper alloy US cent has more than a cents worth of copper in it now (which is why the current ones are zinc or steel with a copper wash).
It's interesting how the less pure coins have much poorer legibility. I wonder if that has to do with the metallurgic properties of impure metal, the greater volume these coins were made in (presumably less time is spent to make each coin), or degradation due to history.
Every money metal other than gold will "rust", or "tarnish" in the case for silver. Gold-plated items will last forever until the thin layer of gold flakes off.
Ignoring any issues of preservation, there are poorly crafted and well crafted coins from every era of the Roman empire. It probably comes down to which mint, who was working, which craftsman sculpted the design, and how much time he had.
"inflation did no lasting damage" A few minutes later: soldiers were paid 8x more than before and the empire couldn't pay it's expenses. Yeah, no damage. Yep.
If a currency with higher inflation can be traded in the foreign exchange market, then it is a good thing for me, usually the more volatile the currency exchange rate, the more profit in the foreign exchange market. People who invest in the Forex market don't need anyone to give them money, they can make their own money.
What's lost on most people is how devaluing a currency is actually stealing from the poor to give to the rich. You see, inflation doesn't happen when those coins are minted with less silver (or the U.S. prints money, e.g.). It happens when the general public realizes it has happened! So, the government gets to mint/print currency that is less valuable to spend at the CURRENT value. This is almost always to the rich; that is, the generals and high-end merchants. Once that currency gets to the poorer parts of society, the true value is then known and that same currency has less buying power. So, until (or if) the inflation levels off, the rich get more buying power than the poor. This is an indirect, but intended, theft.
@@mikesmith6838 I'm so happy to see your comment. If random people are saying it, then the knowledge must finally be getting out. What you're describing is called the "cantillon effect" - money printing benefits the people who get the money first, at the expense of the poor and middle class. Currently, this is clear in interest rates, where near 0% loans are available to banks and investment "institutions", then they make money by loaning at a higher rate to everyone else. Rich people with "good credit" (a euphemism for 'banks prefer to lend to people who don't need it) get lower rates and use it to invest. Meanwhile, because the amount of money in the system is increased, the economy experiences price inflation - prices go up. If prices go up faster than wages, you're poorer, even if you have more money. Inflation is always intentional, and always a scheme to steal from the poor. Rome was much less sophisticated, but it was still the same phenomenon.
@@mikesmith6838 OTOH, If I owe money to the banks and inflation happens, I got to borrow money and spend it at the pre-inflationary value and then pay it back when it's less valuable. Think of the generation who took out mortgages in the 60s and early 70s and got to pay them off with 80s or 90s dollars. Inflation is good for debtors and bad for creditors.
I love history and am an economist. While listening to History of Rome podcast I realized somethin. When I was daydreaming about time travelling back to Imperial Rome, I thought I could not show any fancy stuff to them, except maybe a world map and basic astronomy stuff, because I am no engineer, or metallurgist, or physicist, or doctor, or.. you get it. I am just an economist. And after a while I realized that Rome had no concept of inflation. Like.. at all. I could've saved them single handedly :D
Just to completely ruin your fun thought train there. Remember that today we know a whole heck of a lot about inflation despite the many sophists in economics preaching otherwise (read Keynesians/MMT-ers). Yet here we are. Opening stages of a proper global currency collapse that will make Rome's look like a children's experiment. You can try to rationalise with someone all you want, but when it comes down to feel good now and suffer badly in the future vs suffer a bit now to feel ok later, which one will 100% of all politicians take?
Excellent video with one correction: In the US, money isn't issued by government. It's issued by the Federal Reserve, which the US Supreme Court in 1928 said was a private corporation. (Emergency Fleet Corp. v. Western Union Tel. Co., 275 U.S. 415 (1928)) "Instrumentalities like the national banks or the Federal Reserve banks, in which there are private interests, are not departments of the government. They are private corporations in which the government has an interest."
Incorrect. Every check issued by the government for any authorized contract is money issued by the government. No bank would ever refuse to cash a check issued by the US treasury. The Federal reserve regulates the amount of liquid money in the economy, dollars and cents, but it can't regulate the vast majority of the actual money in the economy, which is recorded and transacted electronically. It can only manipulate the exchange interest rate and use its repository to buy and sell debt in the form of bonds. The reserve actually can't issue money directly either. It has to request money from the treasury, and then distributes money to the banks. Because our money is fiat, it is infinitely flexible, able to be created by adding numbers to a check, and dumping excess money into treasury bonds.
@@David13ushey I'm merely stating what the Supreme Court said in 1928: The Federal Reserve is a private corporation in which the government has an interest.
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 No. Not quite. The fed is a private partner the government has contracted with to manage inflation and unemployment by giving it the right to serve as a monopoly reserve bank. Theoretically, we could end that relationship and create a new fed or multiple feds or get rid of the fed all together. This would be profoundly dangerous because the fed holds on to trillions of dollars in treasury bonds and would no longer have reason to hold on to those bonds. By liquidating those bonds, those trillions would leak back into the economy over the next 1-20 years. The government would then have to sop up that excess money via taxation or by a new entity buying up treasury bonds.
@@tripplefives1402 theoretically - not so clear by how much in the aftermath of the Financial Crisis and time of the Great Recession from 2007 to 2010.
@@tripplefives1402 We had boom and bust cycles long before we switched off the gold standard. "Panics" every 20-30 years throughout US history up until the Great Depression. More often if we count lesser recessions. Deflation causes inflation is a hell of a take though.
12:27 I actually own this exact antoninianus! It is a beautiful coin and much larger compared to previous antoninianii. It still has its silvering on it it too!
"You shouldn't have a committee that sets the price of wheat or bread [eg. USSR, N.Korea, etc.]. Likewise you shouldn't have a committee that sets the price of money [eg. central banks, Fed Rserve, etc.]." -Matthew Kratter
I’m wondering, how much counterfeiting was going on? It won’t have been a significant contribution, but with gold and silver content plummeting, faking a coin should be getting easier and easier?
I actually have a degree in finance and I hobby History since school... I Think you are quantifying the concept of inflation from a western post industrial capitalist perspective where private banks and individuals can issue and print money at no cost through fractional reserve banking and by increasing the supply of money, this reducing the value of things...thus nothing was sacred r deemed so as the romans considered, even homes now were speculative commodities. However the problems with Inflation in roman times was metal scarcity not the fed printing money to his feudal bankers to create a larger bubble in assets that are not reflected in real life and as a result increase the disparity of rich and poor. As a result of this disparity, in roman times, there seems to be a trend of people taking advantage of the compromise integrity of the money value, which was never intended to change from its set value as we see in byzantium the incredible stability of their currency holding wealth for thousand years is a marvel and an embarrassment to western economic systems that were based on the gold smith of feudal ages and their peasants working for them. As you can see the government made reforms to stabilize the coin whereas today in the western world, no such regulation exists but economic rationalism where it is believed. equilibrium can be found by tweaking inflation with interest rates.. and some how create an operating system, however the money markets do not reflect the values derived in real life hence this form of inflation is parsitical and indemic to hurting the middle class in the usa for example..etc...
I find it interesting how you could bring some Romans to this time. And they would be amazed to the point of magic/god-like level of what we have achieved. But if you tell about some problems of our time, it would sound pretty familiar to them.
@@vkrgfan Oh please. There is more upward mobility now than ever. The Roman Empire essentially had a caste system where you were likely stuck in the same class as your parents. Now, most millionaires were not born into wealth.
@@biggie_boss The Roman empire had relatively very high social mobility during the republic and early to middle empire. It was during Diocletians reforms that social mobility in the empire decreased drastically setting Europe on its way to feudalism.
@@alekisighl7599 Sorry, but no. There were noble families, plebians and slaves. You couldn't really just become a noble and to become a plebian senator in the republic was almost unheard of. If you were lucky, you could join the army, live and get some land.
What could possibly go wrong right? Every story with a. Happy ending starts with: “once upon a time there was a corrupt and greedy all powerful elite” 😂😂
your 'thumbnail' on this w/the diminished roman coin was super cool!! this is a vid that stood out. i still don't undertand anything about this (or our) coinage but that's just me, i glean this is not a very good situation . . .
@@rundbaum i love both channels. toldinstone and classical numismatics. an example video, about the denarius m.th-cam.com/video/g7lOzjGYksw/w-d-xo.html
This is very important content to understand. It would be easier to digest if some kinds of graphs and charts were provided to illustrate how the situations progressed because it is hard to follow
As if the same wouldn't have happened under him. Didn't he also want to spend trillions. And the FED would continue its monetary policy, no matter who is in charge. Only somewhat lower gas and oil prices, but really nothing else.
An edict that assigns the death penalty for charging too much, that winds up with essentially no enforcement, is the most late Roman empire thing imaginable
Great video. It's amazing how history repeats itself over and over. The same thing happened in the Eastern Empire (byzantine). The wealthy surviving half made gold solidi of high purity that degraded over time as well that by the 1000-1100 ce era they only had slight gold content in their coinage. I know it's modern, but check out the trillion dollar bill that was issued in Zimbabwe!
Well, the Solidus remained untouched for over 700 years, and was an international standard during that time before a new crisis led to emperors debasing it. That's a pretty good run if you ask me, about 3 times longer than the imperial Denarius.
How could you make the solidi worth more, tax heavily and cut wages? So the treasury has more of the wealth. At that time noone else in the known world had much gold (so the romans could run the world economy), of the Romans would have gone and taken it.
On a mildly interesting side note, one of the Roman coins I own, a denarius minted under Hadrian, is clipped, which, if you are unaware, is a common practice throughout history wherein someone would snip off a small piece of a coin to melt down the precious metal and (hopefully) be able to pass on the rest of the coin at full value. I suppose that makes it less valuable to most collectors but personally I find it far more valuable to me, having that little connection to what was almost certainly a boring, everyday action for whoever did it.
Interesting
Isaac Newton fixed that clipping problem
Did the Roman’s reed the coins to discourage clipping?
@@joellaz9836 clipping causes quartering.
This why U.S. dimes and quarters have reeding around the edge, specifically to stop people from shaving or trimming a thin piece of silver off, and then passing the now underweight coin on to an unsuspecting person or merchant. With the reeding around the edge, anyone can see with a quick glance that the coin hasn't been shaved or trimmed. Even though dimes and quarters no longer are made from silver, they still retain their reed edging.
His book delves into how much money the Romans made - good stuff. I love me some financial history. Money is at the root of most large historical events.
YUP.....root of all evil AS W E L L .......covetousness, lust and thievery, for nearly 6000 continuous years, with only a few hundred years of PEACE , where no wars/murders, pillaging, raping, stealing taking place. WE HAVE A VIOLENT HISTORY,.. this end is near. GLOBALLY .
@@petersack5074 money is just a tool. be like calling a screwdriver evil
@@petersack5074 The LOVE of money is the root of all evil.
@@dickfacepeterson ...wow. kinda like my name,....eh ?
@@dickfacepeterson money is the most powerful tool. It splits families apart and has neighbors wage war on each other. You can comfortably have enough screwdrivers but some people will never be satisfied with their amount of money. People lust for money/valuables like nothing else
Last year's inflation rate is why I changed jobs.
Changing jobs is easier than convincing your boss to give you an actual raise here in the USA.
I'm about to find out in a month or two how MY company decides to address the inflation issue when our pay raises are rolled out.
@@manolokonosko2868 Godspeed, brother.
Welcome to the world of air conditioning in Florida… 8 year 4 year apprenticeship. Finally realized I need my contractors after changing companies 6 times for false promises. I’m always number 1 or 2 in revenue. Hardly any call backs. Customer satisfaction is an always. I’ve got the money put away and a couple good people I’ve met along the way. We’re hopefully starting this year. I should have my license by April
100%
Why not make your own company?
This was a really fun video to make! Thanks for the opportunity for joining you in this presentation.
The romans and the mistakes they've made with their coinage have much to teach us!
Thanks for your contribution! It was a pleasure working with you.
@@toldinstone i hope you will continue working with classical numismatics!
Love both of your channels and Classical helped me buy my first coin (Bronze Domitian) so i was quite upset when there was no mention of him even though I have been told he was very skilled economically and the only Roman emperor to fix inflation.
I should have been sleeping, but now I'm watching videos about Roman coins.
@@fakeplaystore7991 best what you can do!
Here is another topic suggestion - at what point in time did Latin cease being the spoken language of commoners? I suspect that it continued to be the official language for a while after the general population started using early Romance languages or the languages of invading tribes. I would restrict my question to only the western empire as I suspect Latin continued to be used widely in the east.
Excellent query Paul
Latin withered away by evolving into the romance languages - slowly - by at least 800. But Greek, not Latin, was the language of the Eastern Roman Empire from very early on.
@@cerberus6654 exactly
In the east the common people spoke Greek even when the empire was whole. Latin was the administrative language until 7th century and then was replaced by Greek as well
Yes, I would love a video discussing the written and oral languages of ancient Greece and Rome! I'm also interested in how and why Latin stopped being used by commoners, but was still used in the catholic liturgy for centuries after the collapse of Rome.
Historian Norman F. Cantor in his "Medieval History" says that the Emperors were unaware that lowering the silver content of coinage would cause severe debasement of the currency. He remarks: "They [the Emperors] simply did not understand such things as inflation".
That video clip insert is especially informative.
So no Medieval predecessors to Gresham, with his law articulated in 1558 (bad money drives out good)? Have to think some others had observed such a phenomenon before Sir Thomas Gresham...
Otherwise, I believe a few later Emperors did make an attempt improve the content of coinage, like Aurelian and Diocletian, but met mixed, little or no success (like Diocletian forced to back away from such reforms, and try instituting price controls instead).
@@michaeldunne338 Diogenes and his father were banned from Sinope for the debasement of currency.
I think they understood it perfectly well but did not have other options.
@@michaeldunne338 A better formulation of Gresham's law is that overvalued money drives out undervalued money. If a pence made of nickel is valued the same as a pence made of gold, nobody would spend a gold pence when a nickel pence would do.
not debasement but defacement, I think.@@pimpintoads5871
that was a super cool collaboration, seeing the real coins held in someones hand is more useful than you'd think.
Glad you liked it! Ancient coins have very high relief, and are very impressive to hold
@@ClassicalNumismatics amazing, how the ancient creators did the fine reliefs. tiny, but still detail. much to see. i like your zoom video aswell ❤
Roman inflation was only transitory. Their inflation was a good thing.
Oh! The light bulb suddenly went on! I had always heard that debased Roman silver coins had a “wash” of silver over a mostly base metal core. I wondered how they did that without knowledge of electroplating. Aha! They didn’t add silver to the exterior of the coin! They removed copper from the exterior of the coin, leaving silver residue! Brilliant! Thank you for the edification!!!
We do it still in jewellery. Just heat up the silver bullion and throw it in acid repeatedly. Heat+ acid will eat away copper and leave silver on surface.
@@KK-xz4rk Ok, just to make sure I understood correctly. You have a copper-silver alloy, and the acidbaths and heating removes the copper from the alloy, so that only the silver remains?
@@AndDiracisHisProphet No. Acid with the help of heat removes copper only from surface. Inside its the old copper mix but on surface the copper is dissolved and only silver remains so it looks like its made from pure silver. Because of it many viking age coins have small nicks in them. It was a custom to thrust coin with a knife point so trader could see if coin had different alloy inside.
They put silver amalgam (mercury) mix on top. Heat it to drive off mercury and polish.
"Prices continued to rise, and the economy limped on."
History repeats itself.
Thank Biden for high prices
@@bobbylasley2612 you dumb? what high prices did biden cause?
Didn’t know the Roman’s were from the usa? Poor usa still having cheaper gas then most countries and complaining about it.
@@bobbylasley2612 don't worry about the cost your a dying breed white Americans are almost a minority
@@bobbylasley2612 Thank capitalists for low wages and high inflation
An example of Gresham's Law in action: bad money drives out good money.
Thought it'll be interesting to note that the US dollar at present is worth 25 times less than what it was a 100 years ago.
Same for the british pound, and the canadian dollar, and the australian dollar, and just about every other currency on earth. Some worse, some not as bad, but there is significant inflation across the board and it isn't just a US issue.
@@KyleJPie10 After WW2 most countries adopted lots of social programs. I would guess that led to balooning budgets.
And the ignorant will continue to blame it on greedy capitalist for goods and services getting more expensive rather than the governments printing too much much money which debases the currency and makes debt easier to service.
But there is more around
@@megja1812 Yes, most of it in the hands of 1% of the population.
A cool side note: In the mid 3rd century CE, the Romans had a special coin called the double sestertius which was obviously twice the value of a normal sestertius and was meant to weigh twice as much. I've got Postumus' double sestertius overstruck on top of an old Antoninus Pius sestertius. In the 100 years between the two emperors the coin had lost so much value, that a Pius sestertius weighed as much as a Postumus double sestertius.
AD*
@@danksmemington362 no, use CE!
@@Perririri What makes the "common era" the "common era"?
@@danksmemington362 That it is the era since the epoch that has become commonly used.
@@danksmemington362 They're interchangeable, and scholars use both depending on their preference, although the latter has an odor of political correctness, and is slightly more clumsy.
small note, but I always appreciate your ads. simple, clean, straight to the point. you always mention the ways whatever it is that you're advertising has helped you as well. i enjoy that!
And 2,000 years later, government overspending remains the world's biggest problem
And 80 years later nazis are still a bigger problem.
@@endinessendiness7842 lol wut?
@@endinessendiness7842 38 years later, Stanislav Petrov regrets not turning the key.
I just want to say that this chanel got me hooked on the Roman Empire. Best Chanel on TH-cam and best Narrator. Keep up the good work👍
I am amazed how there are such rich and informative TH-cam channels like this one that are greatly not being noticed by the mass. You deserve more attention.
I'm currently reading The Changing World Order by Ray Dalio. It's amazing how throughout history empires rise and fall for reasons that are quite similar. I love how the laws of economics are consistent throughout time.
Because they are based on human nature /psychology which never changes and repeats itself.
Marx figured this out btw.
TRPF theory
Well if you believe in simulation theory then essentially the Romans are running a simulation currently and we are just about 40 years past the collapse of Rome
@@MozTS get outta here commie! 😂
Thanks for bringing on Classical Numismatics! He's a great creator and I only found you after I found him. So it's fun to see you collabing! Thanks to both of you for your channels!
yes, cs is my personal fav youtube channel about ancient roman and greek coins
We are currently In a Roman economy
“Spend 70% on the army” aka America
america spends 3.5% but alr 🙏
Love the team up with ‘Classical Numismatics’! Two of my favourite accounts together.
This channel is great, I'm pleased I found it
Tis
Inflation is ruining me too,wage is same and price of coins go up.
Lessons: Uncontrolled government spending, uncontrolled creation of money, and their resulting inflation are all bad news and price controls don't work.
lesson learned many times over ..
yet ... here we are again (USA)
Uncontrolled govt spending on themselves and their greed, uncontrolled creation of money, and lack of price controls that help the public doesn’t work
@@lisa5249 TRVTH.
@@lisa5249 price controls never worked since the Babylonian times and certainly won't gonna work now.
@@lisa5249 All price control schemes "help the public" according to the blokes devising them.
That they have never worked and have always caused further damage to the people they ostensibly tried to help is, by now, an undeniable fact of life. What cannot quite be scientifically explained yet is why some people are convinced price control schemes "will totally work this time".
You’re adding subs and views like mad. Awesome! Thank you for the video and insights.
Please make more videos about economics of rome and more about coins. I wish this video went on longer. Would love a part 2 or 3 or 4 of something like this. pls more
check out the channel classical numismatics. link in the discription of this video.
In the debates of the coinage act of 1965 that took the silver out of our coinage, a congressman brought up the Roman debasement of currency.
Very good video! At one point the situation got so bad that the Roman government refused to accept its own coins, and demanded that taxes be paid in bullion.
Couldn't get any worse than this 😂😂
Hello Doc. I was hoping that your book would arrive from the shop before christmas, but i got it a couple of days ago after all the holidays. So now i can inform you that a copy has found its way to a bookshelf in the Swedish countryside.
*Romans 2,000 years ago*
"These bankers, taking away our silver"
*Today*
"These bankers, adding more zeros to our money"
On a similar topic, I read that in the years after the death of Alexander, a half talent would support 1 soldier in the field for a year and Ptolemy stole hundreds of thousands from Cleomenes. At the time if you knew how much money Ptolemy had, you know what he was capable of doing.
Great job! This video really allows the viewer to take this information and compare it to our economic situation today.
Wish my dad was alive to watch these. He would've loved them. Thanks for all you do!
This is one of the most fascinating videos you've made yet! Thanks so much for your dedication to this channel
Congrats on 200k!!!!
Much appreciated!
How Inflation Destroyed Everything
Exactly. Empires fail when their money fails
The direction of causation is hardly clear cut. It would be more accurate to say that when everything is being destroyed a monetary system is not likely to remain stable either.
@@BobXTM except there are a few that remain relatively stable for thousands of years :) central banks still use gold for a reason
@@r-gart There are no monetary systems that have remained stable for thousands of years.
very succinct video. If you start messing with the currency, your Empire wanes at best and collapses at worst. Hmmmm....we should be worried.
Fascinating and cautionary. I really enjoy the economics side of history. Thank you Dr Ryan!
The title is kind of self-explanatory, but I really love your videos!
Us humans are like a broken record.
I have a 500 billion dinar note from Yugoslavia, it still gives me nightmares.
The resemblance between the late Roman Empire and today's U$ is striking.
price control part had me thinking of current government rhetoric, “these companies are price gauging… we may set price limits..” scary
Because we have internet the US is much worse than the roman empire ever was. In the next couple decades we will probably see things unfold and further degrade until the US splits into multiple countries doing their own thing. The left/right ideological differences are too much to get past , not to mention the difference in culture of the many people who live in America
The late Roman empire was not covered in this video, where the narration ends at Diocletian. From Diocletian onward, the empire experienced a century of relative peace and prosperity, and about 3 centuries in the eastern provinces.
excellent video!
your collaboration with classical numismatics is great, hope you make more videos together! :)
Hi there! Glad you liked it. There's more to come :)
@@ClassicalNumismatics good news! i have been a fan of you both channel for a while.
@@ClassicalNumismatics 🥵🥵
Part of the issue with the Roman Empire's economy is that it required, essentially, conquest and slavery to grow and sustain - and this includes precious metals. Once they hit the proverbial high water mark and weren't conquering everyone else around them, a lot of economic problems logically followed. This isn't to suggest that conquest and enslaving everyone else is a good solution or anything, just... it is what it is.
The Roman empire didn't do much conquering after Augustus at all. That couldn't have been a great source of income long term, not to mention how expensive military adventures were. The great conquests of the late Republic were conducted more out of strategic concerns by the Senate, or individual wealth and political accolades of the commander.
Imo
And what a parallel to America...
@@histguy101 First off, yeah it did a lot of conquering after Augustus.
Second, I'm not saying it was a huge part, but it was indeed a reality - free labor and free wealth via looting subjugated peoples and areas was a thing. When they hit peak size and the momentum started to roll back a bit, things got a bit tighter for Rome obviously.
And finally the other thing that comes to mind is, giving citizenship to all Romans in all the provinces meant, essentially, less cheap labor to exploit for the wealthy, and this meant more bureaucracy to obtain taxes from its free people, a process which eats into revenue. This also lines up with the fresh Christianity on the scene which basically meant now-Christian Romans couldn't other Christians, which cut off more cheap labor paths. Plus plagues, so labor was getting more expensive and/or harder to come by.
So on top of coin debasement and inflation, there were labor shortages, food shortages, lack of exploitable cheap manpower, people pulling out of the urban areas and taking their wealth/labor to country estates (making them harder to tax). It's a big soup of things, and logically the decline of unimpeded military conquest did *not* help the situation, from Rome's economic standpoint.
@@cerberus6654 there's always planets and meteors to conquer
I’m reminded of Joseph Tainter.
Now THIS is History! Truly massive. Thank you!
BUY THE BOOK!!
WRITE ANOTHER!!!
Very timely video! Thanks, really enjoy your work!
There used to be no such things as exchange rates and foreign coins were accepted everywhere. People had tiny portable scales to weigh coins to determine the value. In fact, the US silver dollar was based on a Spanish coin, which was chosen for it made commerce easy for the little guy, and yet was a good store of value.
I recently bindged your entire channel and am looking forward to buying your book! Thank you for all of your work 🙏
40% of all US currency that ever existed has been created in the last year.
But somehow I still have none of it.
If all this doesn't sound scarily familiar to you, you either haven't been paying enough attention to politics or you are part of problem and partially to blame for the next civilizational breakdown and dark ages.
Except now it's on the scale of the entire world's economy and not just one country in particular.
@@KyleJPie10 well back then rome was the leading power, to some extent the world power in the known world back then.
Classical Numismatics is a fascinating channel, worth the visit.
Thank you! :)
Great job, you nailed the most salient points.
The conclusion was a bit abrupt though: "and the economy limped on..."
Could've talked about the consequences of all this: Roman middle class decimated, taxes raised through the roof, tyrannical tax collectors became more feared than barbarians, and peasants started selling their own children into slavery.
Roman citizens (those who ACTUALLY lived in Rome) didn’t pay any taxes.
They were given a “dole” from the state.
Only the Roman provinces distant from Rome paid taxes.
@nuovissimi Same reason politicians today make bad decisions or rather decisions bad for the bigger picture, public image. Keeping the citizens happy and trusting in you to lead is extremely important i imagine.
I think you just added a lot to this
Seems like the better plan would have been to cut the provinces loose to be their own "states" and thus force Italy to be financially solvent on its own. Of course the states would likely be sympathetic and therefore easily reconquered later on.
I did not know I was interested in this sort of thing but here I am.
I like how your thumbnails usually are
People forget that even in recent history, up until the late 60s, modern coins were also mostly silver.
In USA, the last silver coin intended for public circulation was the 1970 half dollar
Until the face value became less than the metal value - and they were melted down into silver bars (illegally under US law).
The same thing happened to the Italian copper centime (1/100th of a Lira) - the Mafia filled a ship with them and shipped them to Japan.
A copper alloy US cent has more than a cents worth of copper in it now (which is why the current ones are zinc or steel with a copper wash).
Great video as always! The high point of my day!
The fact that this economy was run without the concept of debits=credits is mind numbing.
It's interesting how the less pure coins have much poorer legibility. I wonder if that has to do with the metallurgic properties of impure metal, the greater volume these coins were made in (presumably less time is spent to make each coin), or degradation due to history.
Every money metal other than gold will "rust", or "tarnish" in the case for silver. Gold-plated items will last forever until the thin layer of gold flakes off.
Ignoring any issues of preservation, there are poorly crafted and well crafted coins from every era of the Roman empire. It probably comes down to which mint, who was working, which craftsman sculpted the design, and how much time he had.
I've not been getting notifications from your channel for a while. Tis many frustration.
"inflation did no lasting damage"
A few minutes later: soldiers were paid 8x more than before and the empire couldn't pay it's expenses.
Yeah, no damage. Yep.
If a currency with higher inflation can be traded in the foreign exchange market, then it is a good thing for me, usually the more volatile the currency exchange rate, the more profit in the foreign exchange market.
People who invest in the Forex market don't need anyone to give them money, they can make their own money.
What's lost on most people is how devaluing a currency is actually stealing from the poor to give to the rich. You see, inflation doesn't happen when those coins are minted with less silver (or the U.S. prints money, e.g.). It happens when the general public realizes it has happened! So, the government gets to mint/print currency that is less valuable to spend at the CURRENT value. This is almost always to the rich; that is, the generals and high-end merchants. Once that currency gets to the poorer parts of society, the true value is then known and that same currency has less buying power. So, until (or if) the inflation levels off, the rich get more buying power than the poor. This is an indirect, but intended, theft.
@@mikesmith6838 I'm so happy to see your comment. If random people are saying it, then the knowledge must finally be getting out. What you're describing is called the "cantillon effect" - money printing benefits the people who get the money first, at the expense of the poor and middle class. Currently, this is clear in interest rates, where near 0% loans are available to banks and investment "institutions", then they make money by loaning at a higher rate to everyone else. Rich people with "good credit" (a euphemism for 'banks prefer to lend to people who don't need it) get lower rates and use it to invest. Meanwhile, because the amount of money in the system is increased, the economy experiences price inflation - prices go up. If prices go up faster than wages, you're poorer, even if you have more money. Inflation is always intentional, and always a scheme to steal from the poor. Rome was much less sophisticated, but it was still the same phenomenon.
@@mikesmith6838 OTOH, If I owe money to the banks and inflation happens, I got to borrow money and spend it at the pre-inflationary value and then pay it back when it's less valuable. Think of the generation who took out mortgages in the 60s and early 70s and got to pay them off with 80s or 90s dollars.
Inflation is good for debtors and bad for creditors.
Isn’t that basically what were doing now? I mean just 100 years ago a dollar could get you a lot more than it can now…
Really good video. I never understood how their currency worked. Very interesting 👍.
Nice collab! I really enjoy both of your channels :)
I love history and am an economist. While listening to History of Rome podcast I realized somethin. When I was daydreaming about time travelling back to Imperial Rome, I thought I could not show any fancy stuff to them, except maybe a world map and basic astronomy stuff, because I am no engineer, or metallurgist, or physicist, or doctor, or.. you get it. I am just an economist. And after a while I realized that Rome had no concept of inflation. Like.. at all. I could've saved them single handedly :D
Just to completely ruin your fun thought train there. Remember that today we know a whole heck of a lot about inflation despite the many sophists in economics preaching otherwise (read Keynesians/MMT-ers). Yet here we are. Opening stages of a proper global currency collapse that will make Rome's look like a children's experiment.
You can try to rationalise with someone all you want, but when it comes down to feel good now and suffer badly in the future vs suffer a bit now to feel ok later, which one will 100% of all politicians take?
@@captainotto *most people, hence all politicians.
@@CommonSenz Our clothes and tools are quite different, but our wetware remains largely unchanged!
Great video, amazing channel
Excellent video with one correction: In the US, money isn't issued by government. It's issued by the Federal Reserve, which the US Supreme Court in 1928 said was a private corporation.
(Emergency Fleet Corp. v. Western Union Tel. Co., 275 U.S. 415 (1928))
"Instrumentalities like the national banks or the Federal Reserve banks, in which there are private interests, are not departments of the government. They are private corporations in which the government has an interest."
Incorrect. Every check issued by the government for any authorized contract is money issued by the government. No bank would ever refuse to cash a check issued by the US treasury. The Federal reserve regulates the amount of liquid money in the economy, dollars and cents, but it can't regulate the vast majority of the actual money in the economy, which is recorded and transacted electronically. It can only manipulate the exchange interest rate and use its repository to buy and sell debt in the form of bonds. The reserve actually can't issue money directly either. It has to request money from the treasury, and then distributes money to the banks. Because our money is fiat, it is infinitely flexible, able to be created by adding numbers to a check, and dumping excess money into treasury bonds.
@@David13ushey I'm merely stating what the Supreme Court said in 1928: The Federal Reserve is a private corporation in which the government has an interest.
So, a GOCC which is practically a part of the government but has characteristics of a private enterprise. So, no...
@@jamiedyercville fair enough.
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 No. Not quite. The fed is a private partner the government has contracted with to manage inflation and unemployment by giving it the right to serve as a monopoly reserve bank. Theoretically, we could end that relationship and create a new fed or multiple feds or get rid of the fed all together. This would be profoundly dangerous because the fed holds on to trillions of dollars in treasury bonds and would no longer have reason to hold on to those bonds. By liquidating those bonds, those trillions would leak back into the economy over the next 1-20 years. The government would then have to sop up that excess money via taxation or by a new entity buying up treasury bonds.
This should be forcefully shown to Federal Reserve ( which is neither Federal or a Reserve )
They are doing this is on purpose.
A few years ago, we were all worried about deflation when bonds where being issued with negative real interest rates.
@@tripplefives1402 theoretically - not so clear by how much in the aftermath of the Financial Crisis and time of the Great Recession from 2007 to 2010.
@@tripplefives1402 But deflation causes zero or even negative interest rates
@@tripplefives1402 We had boom and bust cycles long before we switched off the gold standard. "Panics" every 20-30 years throughout US history up until the Great Depression. More often if we count lesser recessions.
Deflation causes inflation is a hell of a take though.
Good video as usual. Have you ever done a video on the Roman mines in Spain? I have read some material on these, but not a lot.
I plan to do a video on Roman mining - with a special focus on Spain - in the relatively near future.
@@toldinstone Thanks, from what I have read, it does appear that Roman mining could be very destructive, just like modern mining.
feels like a video my teacher would show me. this is awesome
maybe this video is better than the average video your teacher woulf show you 😉😎
Am reading your Naked Statues book right now. Found it in the library in Singapore hahaha.
12:27 I actually own this exact antoninianus! It is a beautiful coin and much larger compared to previous antoninianii. It still has its silvering on it it too!
Late antoninianii that retain its original silvering look marvelous on hand!
Hey, thanks for marking the Skillshare chapter. I much appreciate it.
A cautionary tale which has been told repeatedly throughout history.
"You shouldn't have a committee that sets the price of wheat or bread [eg. USSR, N.Korea, etc.].
Likewise you shouldn't have a committee that sets the price of money [eg. central banks, Fed Rserve, etc.]."
-Matthew Kratter
It certainly gives deeper meaning to "give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar" doesn't it?
One of my prized processions is a silver denarius with Emperor Trajan on a necklace I wear daily.
If only the emperors have thought of fiat currency pegged to "faith and credit".🤣
US coins haven’t had any silver content at all since the 60s.
Except the final 1970 Kennedy half dollar. Later coins issued were not intended for public circulation.
I’m wondering, how much counterfeiting was going on? It won’t have been a significant contribution, but with gold and silver content plummeting, faking a coin should be getting easier and easier?
It was incredibly common. Many many counterfeit plated coins reached our days.
I would love to see you continue this thread with a video covering Anastasius I's monetary reforms in the East.
I actually have a degree in finance and I hobby History since school... I Think you are quantifying the concept of inflation from a western post industrial capitalist perspective where private banks and individuals can issue and print money at no cost through fractional reserve banking and by increasing the supply of money, this reducing the value of things...thus nothing was sacred r deemed so as the romans considered, even homes now were speculative commodities. However the problems with Inflation in roman times was metal scarcity not the fed printing money to his feudal bankers to create a larger bubble in assets that are not reflected in real life and as a result increase the disparity of rich and poor. As a result of this disparity, in roman times, there seems to be a trend of people taking advantage of the compromise integrity of the money value, which was never intended to change from its set value as we see in byzantium the incredible stability of their currency holding wealth for thousand years is a marvel and an embarrassment to western economic systems that were based on the gold smith of feudal ages and their peasants working for them. As you can see the government made reforms to stabilize the coin whereas today in the western world, no such regulation exists but economic rationalism where it is believed. equilibrium can be found by tweaking inflation with interest rates.. and some how create an operating system, however the money markets do not reflect the values derived in real life hence this form of inflation is parsitical and indemic to hurting the middle class in the usa for example..etc...
Make a vid
This has been my favorite channel for some time now
same here. i like both channels much.
Phenomenal video Dr. Ryan. How history repeats itself over and over and over again. The only thing that changes is the technology.
Wow only found your channel its brilliant thanks so much for your efforts 👍❤️
I find it interesting how you could bring some Romans to this time. And they would be amazed to the point of magic/god-like level of what we have achieved. But if you tell about some problems of our time, it would sound pretty familiar to them.
The only similarity is that human greed remain constant, the rich exploiting the poor is never gets old.
@@vkrgfan Oh please. There is more upward mobility now than ever. The Roman Empire essentially had a caste system where you were likely stuck in the same class as your parents. Now, most millionaires were not born into wealth.
@@biggie_boss The Roman empire had relatively very high social mobility during the republic and early to middle empire. It was during Diocletians reforms that social mobility in the empire decreased drastically setting Europe on its way to feudalism.
@@alekisighl7599 Sorry, but no. There were noble families, plebians and slaves. You couldn't really just become a noble and to become a plebian senator in the republic was almost unheard of. If you were lucky, you could join the army, live and get some land.
@Martin Ok?
Ironically, people still hav3n't learned that raising the minimum wage WILL generate inflation.
Corruption and Greed
Mmmmmm
What could possibly go wrong right? Every story with a. Happy ending starts with: “once upon a time there was a corrupt and greedy all powerful elite” 😂😂
your 'thumbnail' on this w/the diminished roman coin was super cool!! this is a vid that stood out. i still don't undertand anything about this (or our) coinage but that's just me, i glean this is not a very good situation . . .
check out the channel classical numismatics. link in the discription of this video.
@@aka99 thx!! maybe i could even decide how to not go broke but i do appreciate that knowledge, i will look :) . . .
@@rundbaum i love both channels. toldinstone and classical numismatics. an example video, about the denarius m.th-cam.com/video/g7lOzjGYksw/w-d-xo.html
Oh, wow, you mean that *absolutely gargantuan* military expenditures bankrupted the empire?
Wow, would could have guessed.
Sounds like another empire I know.. 🇺🇲
This is very important content to understand. It would be easier to digest if some kinds of graphs and charts were provided to illustrate how the situations progressed because it is hard to follow
Wonderful video considering I just paid over $140 more for a month’s grocery’s than I did in 2018, but hey, no mean, awful and loud orange man right?
inflation touches prices for roman inflation coins too. modern inflation touches ancient inflation.
Orange mane bad. Money machine go brrrrt.
As if the same wouldn't have happened under him. Didn't he also want to spend trillions. And the FED would continue its monetary policy, no matter who is in charge.
Only somewhat lower gas and oil prices, but really nothing else.
You guys really need to get over trump. He wasn’t cool, he wasn’t good. Get over it. It’s been years now
Great video! I just learned about the Pyramid of Cestius. That could be a cool topic for you to cover!
I'm starting to see a pattern that I'm not so sure I like 💀
Love your vids my dude
from getting 3,000 views over the course of several weeks - if that - to 3,000 in under an hour. Awesome!
I noticed that too. It’s great to see hard work and persistence pay off. Hopefully still a long way to go before the growth of this channel caps out.
An edict that assigns the death penalty for charging too much, that winds up with essentially no enforcement, is the most late Roman empire thing imaginable
Great video. It's amazing how history repeats itself over and over. The same thing happened in the Eastern Empire (byzantine). The wealthy surviving half made gold solidi of high purity that degraded over time as well that by the 1000-1100 ce era they only had slight gold content in their coinage. I know it's modern, but check out the trillion dollar bill that was issued in Zimbabwe!
Well, the Solidus remained untouched for over 700 years, and was an international standard during that time before a new crisis led to emperors debasing it. That's a pretty good run if you ask me, about 3 times longer than the imperial Denarius.
America cut Zimbabwe off from the world economy with sanctions and trade embargoes. That was the main cause of hyperinflation.
How could you make the solidi worth more, tax heavily and cut wages? So the treasury has more of the wealth. At that time noone else in the known world had much gold (so the romans could run the world economy), of the Romans would have gone and taken it.
If only inflation was as light now as it was back then. Only 10 years ago a house where I live was 100k... now you can't find one for under 1.3m