Roman Coins and Roman History pg8

If the last century or so had enjoyed unparalleled peace and prosperity, the next was to witness unprecedented warfare, revolution, and bloodshed. Emperors came and went in a hurry, most were killed either by their own soldiers or would-be successors, and only one died a natural death. Imperial coins continue to serve the emperors' needs: blatant propaganda (nos. 109, 115), attempts to initiate dynastic succession (nos. 111, 112), celebrations of military success (no. 123), glorification of female family members (nos. 113, 124), and notification of religious affiliations (nos. 116, 122). The topicality of the imagery and subject-matter effectively symbolizes the rapid turnover of emperors, but the portrait styles, on the other hand, are uniform and, as befits the age, unremittingly military. Septimius Severus sets the trend (nos. 110-112), and his son Caracalla adds a rough and rugged tone to it (no. 114). Some of the emperors were young (no. 117), born far from Rome (no. 118), manifestly disturbed (no. 119), highly individualistic (no. 121), and proud (no. 122), but all stressed their role as commander-in-chief of the military. The beauty and often striking imagery of these coins cannot, however, hide the fact that the empire was in a state of collapse. Neither can their monetary value.

The debasement of the denarius begun under Nero (A.D. 54-68) reached more than 50 per cent under Caracalla in A.D. 215. Caracalla also created a new double denarius, the antoninianus, which, however, had the weight of only one and one-half denarii; by the reign of Philip the Arab (A.D. 244-249; see no. 118) it had almost rendered the denarius obsolete. The devaluation and debasement of silver continued unabated: under Trajan Decius (no. 119) the antoninianus was worth no more than a denarius, and in A.D. 259 its silver content was down to 15 per cent. Gold too had been successively devalued, from Nero's 1/45 of a pound to Caracalla's 1/50 to an even lower and fluctuating standard in the reign of Gallienus (no. 120), when the fineness of silver coins further dropped to 2.5 per cent. The emperor Aurelian (A.D. 270-275) was hailed as restitutor orbis, "restorer of the world," a title reminiscent of Vespasian and one he earned by virtue of his military successes, his reform of the coinage, and the building of a defensive wall around the city of Rome, much of which stands today and which still bears his name. Yet his reform was only partial, raising weight and fineness standards only marginally. Clearly the empire was in economic peril, but since something is better than nothing, Aurelian's reformed coinage got the empire through the immediate crisis just as his wall kept the barbarians at bay. Serious reform in both coinage and government came with the accession of Diocletian in A.D. 284.

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