Tiberius Iulius Draco wrote:To Valerius Claudius Iohanes,
I have just one question for your roman assessment, what's wrong with a money economy? Having a standard currency as apposed to bartering for everything was one of the most important institutions of a modern, (or ancient) cosmopolitan culture.
Quite so, and I think it was clearly an essential feature of both the Late Republic and the Empire. It allows all sorts of freedoms that older forms of economy did not.
My point would be that it was a complete change in the nature of some of these societies, going from a mixed economy of, say, barter and cattle and worked gold, to one where minted coins were the fuel of the government. Government, as we think of it, would have been a new thing, a revolution: new rulers, a new state, tax-gatherers, new rules of wealth, new opportunities, the proud thrown down, the sons of slaves elevated, etc. I think it would have been, along with the wars and their fallout, a violent change for a lot of the folk Rome came into contact with.
Valete bene, amici!