Roman statesman and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote of coins with fluctuating value in his 44 BCE essay on moral leadership. Centuries later, this briefest of mentions fueled a longstanding historical debate – one that's just been answered by the coins themselves.
"Historians have long debated what the statesman and scholar meant when he wrote 'the coinage was being tossed around, so that no one was able to know what he had.' (De Officiis, 3:80) and we believe we have now solved this puzzle," says University of Warwick archeologist Kevin Butcher.
The Roman state was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy in 91 BCE at least in part due to the Social War against their Italian allies, who wanted citizenship along with the power to vote in Roman elections. By 89 BCE, Rome was mired in a debt crisis, and Cicero's passage suggested people were losing confidence in their currency, the denarius, too.
