Book Three - The Roman Experience

Book Three. THE ROMAN EXPERIENCE FROM the monetary experience of the Greeks, it is natural for us to pass westward to Rome, the mistress of the ancient world. The Roman experience with money is of importance to us for we are, in a sense, the residuary legatee of Roman civilization, of Roman concepts in law, politics and administration, and particularly of Roman concepts of money. And in passing to Rome our attention inevitably focuses upon the great monetary crisis of the third century A.D., escaping, for the moment, the historical events that led to that debacle. /. Crisis In the Empire THE situation of the Roman Empire in the latter half of the third century was a condition of depression and despair to which the modern world, with its dips in the business curve, its paroxysms of commercial expansion and contraction, can present no parallel. Trade was stagnant, the imperial treasuries were empty, money was depreciating, and trade, such as existed, had almost reverted to a barter basis. Everywhere land was falling to waste, untilled, empty, gaunt, the water courses dried and the poplars sere and yellow, the walls crumbling under the elements, the huts and cottages deserted and succumbing to ruin. Peasants had forsaken the soil, seeking the greater safety of the town or city, where, if employment was not to be had, there was free corn and amusement. The vast estates, which had been built up under the influence of slave labor, the imperial system, and commercial economy, were untended and falling into desuetude, the slaves running away and revolting, the hired managers, sensing the "end of things" and the futility of effort, hastening to line their pockets with such profits as could still be eked out, and the patrician owners, fearful of the stability of the regime, 28 THE ROMAN EXPERIENCE 29 taking their liquid capital, their gold and silver and jewelry and hiding it against the day of inevitable collapse.

In the cities and towns, misery was assuaged by the circus, while disease spread and hunger and rioting waxed. The craftsman could no longer ply his trade, for the iron, the leather, and the wood could not be obtained. Sea trade was at the mercy of roving pirates and had practically ceased to exist. Public wealth and private wealth, both struck at their sources, were vanishing. The authority of the government had disappeared, the country was in chaos and anarchy, the army had lost its discipline, and on the frontiers the barbarians were unhindered in their depredations of the Roman provinces. "The accumulation of miseries," writes Leon Homo, "which was reinforced by terrible natural catastrophes, plagues and earthquakes, spared none of the regions of the Empire, and, as was to be expected, produced the most disastrous effects in the economic domain. Shortage of production and impossibility of movement .... money shortage and high cost of living ....

depopulation and general ruin—the whole economic fabric of the state was cracking and seemed likely to break up at any moment."1 And in the words of Ferdinand Lot, "The Empire from the third century onward is a preparation for the Middle Ages."2 //. The Money Problem Appears To understand the causes of the commercial collapse of the Empire, it is necessary that we trace briefly the appearance and early manifestations of the money problem in the Roman Republic. The Romans were a military people, and had been slow to adopt the use of the new device of coinage, which the Greek traders, with their shiny, silver drachmas, had been slowly popularizing in Italy. Not for two hundred years after its first introduction, or well into the fifth century B.C., do we find coinage supplanting, in the domestic transactions of the Latins, the use 30 MONEY AND MAN of bronze or copper by weight. Even then, the implications of coinage were not assimilated, its proper use and functions were not grasped, and, almost immediately, we begin to note the effects of its more pernicious influences.

It is during this same century that marked the introduction of copper coinage that the money question protruded itself into Italy. From the first, the problem of debt was an aggravating cause of the Social wars and the early struggles between the plebians and the patricians. And while the institution of debt is more ancient than the institution of coinage, or even money, the consequences of debt were sharpened and embittered by the ease of going into debt which circulating capital, like coin, provided. The early debt problems grew out of the military organization of Rome. The Roman army was originally a militia, whose service was temporary. The citizens were called up at the beginning of each campaign, and at the end they returned to their homes, without receiving any pay. Every man had to provide his own equipment. The citizens recruited had to leave their fields and their beasts. Since they got no pay, the cost of the campaign fell on every man. If they returned safe and victorious, they often found their farms neglected, their fields ravaged and their cattle driven off by the enemy.

This calamity prevented them from sharing in the profits of victory when the war ended favorably at Rome. As they were without resources they borrowed, and fell into debt. In Rome the laws on debt were very hard. This was, without any doubt, one of the causes which contributed to ruining the middle class and swelling the mass of the poor, the landless, the proletariat. In 375 B.C. we hear of the first debt cancellation—a practice which later became frequent as one crisis followed another in the growing commercialism of the Republic and the Empire. This was one of the famous Licinian Rogations, a program of reform advanced by Licinius, one of the people's tribunes. In 342 B.C. as a measure to cope with the growing money problem, Roman citizens were forbidden to accept interest at all, but they managed their usurious practices by arranging loans through the Latins and dummies of other Italian states.

THE ROMAN EXPERIENCE 3 1 -$ §»> Meantime, the growth of money and liquid capital, as a result of the military successes of the legions, combined with a fiscal system which was never equipped to cope with the problems of money economy, was creating new difficulties. With the final defeat of Carthage by the series of exhausting Punic wars, and the transfer to Rome of the commercial and financial hegemony of the Western Mediterranean, money began to take on new importance. Rome, as a result of its military power, was in today's language, a creditor on international account, with a heavy balance of payments in its favor. Tribute payments and proconsular revenues, and such less legitimate gains as the booty of victorious generals and the profits of provincial tax farming found their way to Italy both in the form of money and in the form of a flood of imports with which domestic industry could not compete. The result was stagnation in agriculture and domestic manufacture. Thus, as money poured in from abroad, poverty and debt increased—a paradox that has not been limited to Rome.

To solve these problems, the Licinian laws were repeatedly revived, particularly during the period of the Gracchi—Tiberius and Caius (133-121 B.C.)—and Caius tried to introduce a complex program including increased taxation of the provinces (with the idea, it is supposed, of setting the financiers against the landowners), the starting of enormous public works to give employment, and increased distribution of subsidized cheap corn. Still another recourse which was attempted—as it has been attempted since in history—was that of price fixing. The aediles had, and frequently exercised, the authority to fix prices within the city. To the political logic of the Romans it was easier to solve the demands of the depressed classes by arbitrary measures against speculators and honest traders than by attacking the fundamental question of a sound fiscal and economic system. <«§ $»> Meantime, the inequalities of classes and the social strife and 32 MONEY AND MAN unrest were fostered by the growth of speculation, the indulgence in non-productive commercialism and the mad scramble for money. Roman political policy gravitated around the quest for treasure. In the maneuvers of Caesar with Pompey and the Senate, for instance, may be traced an astute play to get hold of the gold mining regions.

Banking and speculation appeared on the scene. The sale, purchase and exchange of money were growing important since Rome had become a center for a swarm of foreigners from every city and country. The Roman monetary system was gradually being extended, and Greeks and Orientals who came to Rome with gold or silver money struck in their own countries had first of all to exchange it for Roman denarii. This was a source of great profit to the bankers, or argentarii, because of the great varieties of coinage brought to them. Another activity of the bankers was the organization of companies to bid for state monopolies. As public expenditure increased, the tax farm, or revenue collecting agencies, became a lucrative privilege. The shares of these companies were widely held—by senators, smaller nobles and commoners—and trading in the shares became even more profitable than money changing. Some companies, like those which had the tax farm of Sicily, and which had such influence at Rome that it was impossible for the provincials to obtain justice against the organized, methodical spoliation which was practiced, were immense earners. But the fortunes of war, the invasion of a province, like that of Asia by Mithridates, rendered the shares highly risky; and the vicissitudes of foreign affairs were immediately translated into the commercial crises of Rome. There were cases of absolute financial panic.

///. King of Shreds and Patches ROMAN administration, despite its achievements in the fields of politics and law, never succeeded in erecting a monetary system. It is quite likely that imperial policy never took cognizance of THE ROMAN EXPERIENCE 33 money, except to use it for its own ends, and never appreciated its importance in civilized economy. At no time, in the long period that Rome was the center of the Mediterranean imperium, was there any defined monetary policy, or was there exercised over the money mechanism any authority except of the most capricious character. It is doubtful, in fact, whether the Romans had any conception of money, or its functions. Certainly their understanding of it was most superficial in comparison with the well defined philosophy of the Greeks. In reviewing the monetary system of the Romans during the imperial period we note at the outset the absence of uniformity in the coinage. Only toward the very end of the Empire, in the time of Diocletian, do we find the sovereign prerogative of the state asserting itself over the coinage. Among the reforms which that monarch introduced, in a vain effort to stem the tide of disintegration, was the absorption of the currency system into the imperial administration.

When the curtain of history opened upon the imperial scene, in the age of Augustus Caesar, the money of the Empire consisted of three metals—gold, silver, and copper. At the top of the scale was the imperial aureus, a gold coin which Julius Caesar had originated, weighing at the start one-fortieth of a libra (say 126 English grains) or of a size approximating the old five dollar gold piece or the present English sovereign. Below the aureus was the denarius, a silver coin which had been introduced in 277 B.C. in imitation of the Athenian drachma, but which was now somewhat lighter (approximately 60 grains as compared with the 66 of the drachma), and which may have had an official ratio of 25 to the aureus. Below the denarius was the sestertius or sesterce, theoretically onefourth of the denarius, struck both in silver and in bronze; and finally the as, a copper piece equivalent to onefourth of a sesterce.

The Empire was nominally—though never very effectively —on a gold standard. Actually, it was on a bimetallic, or tri34 MONEY AND MAN metallic, standard, with three metals—gold, silver and copper— all in use and with no effective ratios maintained among them. Gold was the standard for imperial payments and taxes were exacted in gold, or in silver and copper, at a constantly increasing rate for gold (set by official money changers connected with the imperial office), and gold was used for donations to the army. For empire trade, and particularly for the foreign trade— with India, Persia and China—which was becoming important, silver was the accepted medium, while for the ordinary transactions of the city and among the poor, copper was the common denominator of value. We may understand the absence of system in the coinage by reference to the various authorities exercising jurisdiction over the mints. The emperors jealously maintained the prerogative of gold coinage, and all the aurei struck bore their effigy, but from want either of foresight or of will, the coinage of silver and copper remained at the mercy of a host of diverse authorities.

Augustus had made some half-hearted attempts to unify the coinage, but the Senate, chief antagonist of imperial power, shrewdly asserted its ancient prerogatives, and Nero, around A.D. 54, returned to it the authority of which it had been deprived by Augustus. During the reign of Nero, the mark of the Senate (S. C.) again appeared on all gold and silver, and down to the time of Diocletian all bronze minted under the imperial authority was "with the consent of the Senate." In the East, Roman monetary ideas never took hold, and the peoples in that part of the Empire insisted with considerable pertinacity on the retention of their own mints. In this they were aided by the demands of foreign trade, in which Roman coins, because of their inferiority, their adulteration with base metal, and their irregularity in weight, were everywhere suspect; and for the Eastern Mediterranean, and the trade with India, Greek drachmas continued to be minted—at Caesaria in Cappadocia, Antioch in Syria, Tyre in Phoenicia, and occasionally in a few other towns, until well toward the time of Diocletian.

For the great mass of local transactions copper continued to THE ROMAN EXPERIENCE 35 be the chief medium of exchange, and either as the result of a positive policy of cultivating local favor or out of ignorance of its consequences, the emperors allowed to numerous provincial cities the right of striking copper and bronze coins. Some of these were in the nature of commemorative medals, and none of them was legal tender beyond a limited area. Later, however, these bronze coins of Eastern cities became the only trusted coins in the Empire, and were circulated widely, even in the northern parts of Europe. <«§ §«> In addition to the gold coinages of the Emperor, the silver of the Senate and the important trading cities of the East, and the bronze and copper of a long list of lesser cities, we find that generals in command on the frontiers were frequently permitted to strike money. During the Republic, in the year 91 B.C., the generals had been authorized to coin moneys in their own name, and from the time of Sulla they occasionally issued gold coins in the provinces.

Finally, among those who exercised power over the money system, must be mentioned the mint masters and money changers. Early in the Republic the mint masters had come to exercise considerable authority over coinage. At the time of the introduction of silver coinage, in the third century B.C., the Senate had set up a body of Mint Commissioners to regulate the coinage. The Mint Commissioners quickly assumed autocratic powers and after the last Punic War they began to stamp on the coins their own monograms rather than the insignia of the Republic. The authority they exercised was not easily to be surrendered, and because of their organization into a powerful guild, they were able to defy the emperors. When, for instance, Aurelian attempted to reform the coinage in A.D. 274 they resisted his efforts, revolted, fortified the Caelian hill in Rome, and the Emperor wrote that he lost the lives of 7,000 soldiers in their subjugation.

36 MONEY AND MAN Such was the failure of the Romans, in dealing with the money mechanism, that its simplest problem—a uniformity of the standard—they never succeeded in solving. Money, which rules the destinies of men more than any Caesar or basileus, remained in Rome a "king of shreds and patches." It is now necessary to examine the failure of the emperors, despite the autocratic power at their command, the wealth of philosophy and administrative ability at their beck, to meet and treat with the money mechanism in another of its insidious manifestations. IV. Imperial Impotence To the fond admirer of Roman civilization, schooled in a reverence for Roman probity and justice, it will come as a shock to find how impotent the government was to resist the temptation to profit by the nefarious practice of currency debasement. The administration which could fling a highway from the Pillars of Hercules to the Bosporus, and erect the Colosseum and the temple of the Sun at Baalbek, and formulate the principles of law assembled in the Corpus Juris and the Pandects, could nevertheless stoop to plugging silver denarii with iron, and washing copper with gilt, and palming off on its citizens the most thinly disguised counterfeits of honest coin. The practice of currency debasement pervades the history of Roman administration. Hardly had money appeared in the Street of Janus, than began the vicious practice that was to work such havoc in the Empire, and by the tradition it gave to Europe, to multiply the misery, the confusion and the blight of medievalism.

The earliest Roman money was the as, theoretically a libra, or a pound of copper. Originally, aes were rude lumps of copper unadorned with any effigy or stamp, and passed by weight. When the practice of stamping ingots of copper or bronze was introduced into Umbria and Italy, in the middle of the fifth century B.C., the metals were made up into pieces of defined weight, known as as signatum (stamped copper), and passed by tale. During the succeeding century the bulky as signatum was supTHE ROMAN EXPERIENCE 37 planted by a heavy round coin—the as grave—and coinage as an institution was fairly started. With coinage and metal pieces passing by tale rather than by weight, appeared the surreptitious debasement which has so long been the curse and temptation of those in charge of money. By the middle of the third century, the as weighed no more than four ounces, and at the time of the first Punic War, after the year 241 B.C., it weighed but two ounces. Sometime later, at an uncertain date, but possibly 89 B.C., it was reduced by 75 per cent, or to half an ounce, and at the beginning of the Empire, it had been generally supplanted by the new sesterce, equivalent to four aes.

The Roman denarius had, under the Republic, enjoyed a somewhat better fate. It had been introduced in 277 B.C., after the defeat of Pyrrhus had made Rome undisputed master of Italy, and tribute was beginning to flow in quantity toward the Seven Hills. The adoption of silver coinage may have been the result of these more abundant supplies of the metal, and if so, it would give the lie to the excuses of money scarcity offered for the recurrent debasement of the as. Possibly it arose from the necessities of an expanding trade, and a distrust abroad of the fluctuating Roman coinage. It was in silver drachma, or its equivalents, that what we should now call the international exchanges were settled. The great unit of account in the Hellenic world was the Attic drachma, issued by Athens, the purity of which was unquestioned, and it was an unconscious tribute to the superiority of Greek commercial policy, and acknowledgment of the necessity of conforming the Roman coinage to a world standard, that the silver denarius of Rome was modelled, as to weight and fineness, after the Athenian drachma* This meant a weight of about 66 grains. By the beginning of the Empire period, however, the denarius had been reduced to 60 grains in weight.

"In reviewing the causes which contributed to the decline of * Compare the present-day practice of "backward" countries in tying their currency systems either to the dollar or to sterling. The name denarius derives from the fact that it was originally issued as equivalent to 10 of the copper aes.

38 MONEY AND MAN the wealth and the diminution of the population of the Roman Empire," says George Finlay, "it is necessary to take into account the depreciation of the coinage, which frequently robbed large classes of the industrious citizens of a great part of their wealth, reduced the value of property, produced confusion in legal contracts, and anarchy in prices in the public markets. The evils which must have resulted from the enormous depreciation of the Roman coinage at several periods can only be understood by a chronological record of the principal changes, and by remembering that each issue of a depreciated coinage was an act of bankruptcy on the part of a reigning emperor."1 The imperial coinage, instituted by Augustus upon the foundations laid by Julius Caesar, was undisturbed for seventyfive or eighty years; but with the accession of Nero (A.D. 54) we note the first official step in its deterioration. Nero reduced the size of the gold aureus from 40 to the libra to 45, and reduced the denarius from 84 to the libra to 96 to the libra.

Succeeding emperors increased the quantity of alloy in the denarius, and it is under the Antonines—the so-called golden age of Rome—that the deterioration became marked. Under Trajan and his successors the denarius, which up to the time of Nero was 99 per cent pure silver, dropped to 75-80 per cent. Under Septimus Severus (proclaimed Emperor A.D. 193) the depreciation became worse. In the silver coins the base metal rose to the proportion of 50 to 60 per cent, the fine silver content of the denarius dropping to around 26 to 32 grains (against an original fine weight of 66). By this time the fluctuations in the value of money were seriously affecting foreign commerce, especially with India, where by now, of Roman money only the gold seems to have been acceptable. Although in domestic transactions the legal tender value of the coinage was supported by the imperial authority, and the coins were given a forced circulation within the Empire, after the time of Septimus Severus the denarius ceased to pass the frontiers. In the North good silver was demanded, and the coins of purer silver disappeared over the border.

THE ROMAN EXPERIENCE 39 As the third century advanced, the depreciation became so rapid that it is characterized by Mommsen as a chute. The gold piece, which had apparently retained something of its original weight, was being surreptitiously, if not officially, adulterated. Probably the standard was kept by minting coins at full weight for the army, but it appears that other gold coins issued for treasury payments contained up to 50 per cent base metal. Caracalla (A.D. 215) officially reduced the value of the aureus from 45 to 50 to the libra. From Caracalla to Gallienus (A.D. 215-268) the monetary system was in a state of the utmost confusion. The denarius had gradually been so reduced in size and in silver content that even the imperial authority could not give it validity. Caracalla therefore introduced a new silver coin, the argentus antoninianus, weighing 60 to the libra, or about 84 grains, and as the denarius gradually sank in value and became eventually a copper coin, the antoninianus became the principal silver coin of the Empire. The antoninianus, however, soon began the same dizzy downward course as the denarius, the base metal content increasing, until by the end of the reign of Gallienus, it too was no more than base metal washed over with silver. A large number of these coins went into hoarding.

"Little by little the other moneys, at first those having an actual value, then those without value, were drawn down by this whirlpool and disappeared into the gulf," says Mommsen. "It is not an exaggeration to say that in the last half of the third century there existed no longer in the Roman Empire any money having an intrinsic value corresponding to its nominal value, not even a piece of brass or billon."2 ^ $•> With such a chaos of coinage—depreciated gold, debased silver, copper masquerading as silver by a thin wash of tin, coins of less than their stamped weight, coins plugged with iron, silver coins so alloyed with copper that they passed for copper —one wonders how trade was carried on, what was the standard of value, in what medium money accounts were kept.

40 MONEY AND MAN Due to the variations in the ratios between copper, silver and gold, arising from varying supplies of the metals and the estimate placed upon them, as well as the varieties of coins in use as the depreciation continued, a third measure of value had been introduced, the money of account. This was the sestertius or sesterce, which was nominally onefourth the denarius, but actually was an imponderable—since the actual coined sesterce was constantly fluctuating—derived from the bullion or intrinsic value of a sesterce that once, but no longer, existed, and the current rate of exchange of depreciated coins. It was a system somewhat like that found in China where accounts might be kept in taels, a unit of weight varying from province to province, but discharged in depreciated dollars, copper and brass cash, or in sycee (silver bars). The denarius at its original rate of one twenty-fifth of an aureus was also used as money of account, but as the coined denarius continued to depreciate until it was nothing more than a piece of copper circulating at 500 to 525 to the aureus, and as the aureus was likewise debased, the money of account became merely a symbol, a twenty-fifth of an aureus, which in turn did not exist except as a division of the libra.

Money had also different values according to its purpose. Denarii could legally be tendered at a certain rate in discharge of commercial debt, but at another rate—a lower one, of course —for taxes; while for foreign trade it had a third rate, its bullion value. In imperial payments the same accounting prevailed in reverse order. The silver denarius, for instance, during the days when it was still silver and in good repute, was current for 16 of the copper aes, but was paid to the legion at the rate of 10 aes— the rate of exchange constituting in effect a bonus to the military. Later, when they were no more than pieces of tin-washed copper, they were paid out by the imperial treasury in discharge of debts at the rate of 25 to the aureus; but in the payment of taxes they were received at 500 to 525 to the aureus. Pure metal coins were struck for army pay and debased coins for other purposes.

The imperial mints deliberately mixed a certain proportion of THE ROMAN EXPERIENCE 41 plated coins (base metal washed with silver) among the more honest, and all had to be accepted at the official rate. Greek drachmas had continued to be coined, at Caesarea in Cappadocia, Antioch in Syria, Tyre in Phoenicia, and occasionally in a few other towns, but this relatively pure money was itself drawn into the general crisis. The admission of the tetradrachmas of Antioch into the money of the Empire, under the reign of Gordian III, the same favor accorded by Philippus to a portion of bronze struck in Syria, finally the cessation of these diverse coinages toward the epoch of Gallienus; all this is perfectly explained, says Mommsen, by the efforts of the government to raise the value of the imperial money. "To accomplish this," he says, "it assimilated new moneys which still retained an appearance of real value; it should necessarily result that soon these moneys would likewise disappear, as had the Roman denarii of silver and billon, as had the sesterces. It is what took place. In this terrible period, one sees disappearing at the same time the last vestiges of political institutions which had up to now survived in the Empire; even ancient civilization had already begun to disappear."3 A pathetic commentary on the times is the large quantity of Roman money that went into hoarding, the finding of which has enriched the cabinets of collectors. The hoards secreted toward the end of the third century consist almost solely of copper. In these patina encrusted pieces one reads the frantic uncertainty of the age—the emperor an embezzler, the government a liar, and frightened men clutching at bits of copper as the sole reality in a crumbling world.

It is difficult to say what was legal tender money during the decline of the Roman Empire. What had been intended to be purely local issues circulated widely throughout the Empire as full value coins preferred to imperial money. The bronze of the 42 MONEY AND MAN East, which was of considerable weight and excellent material, drifted westward, and large numbers of bronze coins of Syria and Egypt have been found on the banks of the Rhine where the legions were encamped. Bronze also found its way into the melting pot, with the result that bronze money, rare in the time of Commodus (A.D. 180-193) largely disappeared towards the last quarter of the third century. The old copper as had ceased to be minted in A.D. 217 and the most abundant medium of exchange was the antoninianus, now (A.D. 270) a copper coin with about 2 per cent silver. Generally speaking, copper coins only were legal tender, and these were nearly always issued at an overvaluation. Some of the emperors, while they paid out overvalued copper coins for government disbursements, required the revenues to be collected in silver, while others demanded payments into the treasury to be made in gold; but these measures were soon abandoned as impractical. So long as they could, the silver producing provinces were compelled to pay in silver, and the gold producing ones, in gold. But, after that, neither legal tender laws nor robbery could bring forth gold or silver. The aborigines had been stripped, the mines were worked down to the last phase of Roman mechanical and metallurgical resource, the depositories at Rome had been plundered, the bulk of the precious metals had gone to Asia. There was nothing left to make money of but copper, and towards the fourth or fifth centuries even this metal became scarce.

V. Struggle Against Chaos AGAINST this creeping paralysis that was benumbing not only trade and industry but the government and the army, a number of the later emperors frantically struggled. Aurelian had attempted in A.D. 274 what seems to have been an experiment in "managed currency," was bitterly opposed by the speculators and money changers, and lost 7,000 troops in quelling the revolt. Diocletian, the most absolute of all the emperors, was born THE ROMAN EXPERIENCE 43 and bred a soldier, but he recognized the importance of the money question and attempted a general recoinage. Despite his autocratic exercise of power, however, he was unable to achieve any uniformity in the weights of his coins, either of gold or silver; the money mechanism had so far disintegrated that the best he could do was to reestablish, not a coinage, but uniform standards of weights and measures. Mommsen blames "audacious frauds, half measures of reform, simultaneous issues of gold by colleagues, and often by rival rulers on different bases, or the infidelity of officers charged with the control of money."

The disintegration continued, and there seemed no power great enough to stop it. The treasury was empty, agriculture prostrate, industry demoralized, trade stagnant, and the only commercial activity was a maddened, consuming, parasitic speculation. In A.D. 301 Diocletian issued his famous price fixing decree as the last measure of a desperate sovereign. Only portions of this decree have come down to us—fragments here and there turned up by archaeologists—but enough to reveal it as one of the most unusual documents in history. The discovery of portions in the farthest corners of the Empire confirms its widespread application, and the language of the preamble reveals, in words most explicit, both the terrible degree of economic collapse and the vagueness and superficiality of Roman economic philosophy: For, if the raging avarice .... which, without regard for mankind, increases and develops by leaps and bounds, we will not say from year to year, month to month, or day to day, but almost from hour to hour, and even from minute to minute, could be held in check by some regard for moderation, or if the welfare of the people could calmly tolerate this mad license from which, in a situation like this, it suffers in the worst possible fashion from day to day, some ground would appear, perhaps, for concealing the truth and saying nothing; .... but inasmuch as there is seen only a mad desire without control, to pay no heed to the needs of the many, .. . .it seems good to us, as we look into the future, to us who are the fathers of the people, that justice inter44 MONEY AND MAN vene to settle matters impartially, in order that that which, long hoped for, humanity itself could not bring about may be secured for the common government of all by the remedies which our care affords Who is of so hardened a heart and so untouched by a feeling of humanity that he can be unaware, nay that he has not noticed, that in the sale of wares which are exchanged in the market, or dealt with in the daily business of the cities, an exorbitant tendency in prices has spread to such an extent that the unbridled desire of plundering is held in check neither by abundance nor by seasons of plenty As more and more fragments of the decree have come to light, and scholars have been able to reconstruct the document, we are able to realize its importance to the historian as indicating, more surely than the bellicose narratives of ancient historians, the true state of Rome at this period. The decree, by the very completeness of the list of articles whose prices it regulated, must have been felt in every village and countryside in the imperial domain. The prices of all articles of trade, from a measure of beer and a bunch of watercress to a piece of genuine purple silk and pure gold in bars, and of services from the shaving of a man or the shearing of a sheep to the fees of a lawyer for presenting a case, were set out in detail.

The price fixing decree of Diocletian was a failure, and was abandoned within five years. It cast economy into too rigid a mold, with the result, in the West at least, of further disintegration. From the crisis of the third century, the Western Roman Empire never recovered. By the fourth century money had fallen to the degraded position of ponderata, when it was customary to assay and weigh each piece. And by the seventh century, the weights themselves had been so frequently degraded that it was no longer possible to make a specific bargain for money. There was no law to define the weight of a pound or an ounce, and no power to enforce the law if one existed. Under these circumstances money became extinct. Nor, as Del THE ROMAN EXPERIENCE 45 Mar recounts, was it the only institution to perish; all institutions had perished. There was no government except the sword, there was no law; there were no certain weights and measures.

Exchanges were made in kind, or for slaves, or bags of corn, or lumps of metal, which men weighed or counted to one another, holding the thing to be sold in one hand, the thing bought in the other. No more fittingly can we close this chapter on the failure of the Romans to cope with money than by quoting the words of Antoninus Augustus, cited by Del Mar, "Money had more to do with the distemper of the Roman Empire than the Huns or the Vandals."