The Money That Built and Broke Rome | Roman Currency Explained

A lump of unmarked bronze, weighed on a scale because nobody had any better way to agree on what it was worth. Five hundred years later: an empire, an army payroll, and a coin that could lie about its own value. This is the story of Roman money — from unshaped bronze ingots through stamped bars, true cast coinage, borrowed Greek silver, the true denarius born out of Rome's worst military disaster, gold reserved for emergencies only, and the slow imperial habit of letting a coin's name outlive what it was actually made of. It's not really a story about metal. It's a story about trust, and how easy it turns out to be to spend that trust down to nothing. 🎬 This is a standalone deep-dive from Sons of Rome — if you want the story this history feeds into, Chapter 1 starts here:    • Cornelius – Aulus – Chapter 1: The Wall | ...   #RomanHistory #AncientRome #History #RomanCurrency FULL SOURCE LIST Primary/scholarly: Albarède, F., Blichert-Toft, J., Rivoal, M., Telouk, P. (2016). "A glimpse into the Roman finances of the Second Punic War through silver isotopes." Geochemical Perspectives Letters 2, 127–137. DOI: 10.7185/geochemlet.1613 Crawford, M.H. (1974). Roman Republican Coinage. Cambridge University Press. (cited throughout via Wikipedia and the Albarède et al. paper) Reference/secondary (numismatic specialist): Wikipedia: "Denarius," "Aureus," "Aes rude," "Aes signatum," "Aes grave," "Roman Republican currency," "Debasement" NumisLens: "The Roman Denarius: Rome's Silver Coin Explained"; "The Aureus: Rome's Gold Coin, Caesar to Constantine" CoinWeek: "Roman Coins From the War Against Hannibal"; "Ancient Coin Profiles: Roman Gold Aureus of Julius Caesar" NGC (Numismatic Guaranty Company): "NGC Ancients: The Decline of Roman Silver Coinage, Part I" TheCollector: "The First Roman Coin: Early Roman Coinage & the Bronze Standard"; "The Debasement of Roman Coinage During the Third-Century Crisis" CoinsWeekly: "Golden Age: Collecting the 12 Caesars in Gold Aurei" Mises Institute: "War Finance: Hannibal ad portas!"