The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) is often referred to as the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression, and it probably is, but the GFC and the Great Depression are nothing new. The recent discovery in Somerset County, England of a hoard of 52,000 coins is a good reminder of a much earlier GFC which is thought by many to have swept through the Roman Empire in the third century AD. (See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10546960 for more on this exciting find.)
Hundreds of Roman coin hoards have been found all over the empire, especially in Britain, dating to the third century AD. Some of these hoards contain many thousands of silver and bronze coins and all of them appear to have been carefully buried.
In the case of the Somerset hoard, why would anyone bury 160 kg (350lb) of coins and even more intriguing, why wouldn’t they come back for them at some stage?
The early part of the third century AD saw a sharp increase in the number of Roman soldiers serving in the army and it also saw their pay increase sharply too. The emperors were forced to mint more coins to pay them. Difficulties in mining enough silver to meet these needs meant that the silver content of the coins dropped as well.
The combination of more coins in the market and that they contained less silver content saw huge spikes in inflation. By about AD 280, Roman silver coins contained less than 1% of actual silver and were virtually worthless. This partly explains why so many large hoards have been found dating to the third century AD.
The coins that people saved were eventually not that valuable when it came to buying things so people didn’t bother coming back for them – that’s what I call a financial crisis and in the Roman world, it was global.
Another explanation for hoards such as the one found in Somerset, is that the third century AD was a period of military and political calamity for the Romans. There were major invasions of Rome’s territory in its eastern provinces and also from tribal groups in Eastern Europe and Germany into the western provinces.
As well as these invasions there were large-scale rebellions against the emperors by individuals who set themselves up as alternate emperors. The Palmyrenes in Syria took control of all of Rome’s eastern provinces around AD 270 and in Britain and northern Gaul (France & Belgium) there were also major rebellions by pretenders to the imperial throne from AD 260-295.
The Somerset hoard comes from the period of the British usurper, Carausius, around AD 290. When large-scale invasions and usurpations took place, people (especially soldiers) were more likely to be killed, enslaved or had to flee from the areas where they were based. This meant they were more likely to lose the savings they had buried.
So, why did people bury their savings when the Romans had banks and safe-houses and why might they not come back to collect their savings if they could?
Overspending by governments on the military eroded the currency and this, together with the political and military turmoil of the third century meant people lost faith in both banks and the currency.
All of this sounds familiar doesn’t it? The biggest difference is that we have a complex understanding of economics and why these crises take place. The Romans didn’t and it took many decades into the fourth century for the financial situation to stabilise.
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