![]() ![]() Roman officials found a way to work around this. How was the newest war, thermae, palace, or circus to be paid for? This made financing the pet-projects of emperors challenging. However, with a finite supply of silver and gold entering the empire, Roman spending was limited by the amount of denarii that could be minted. During the first days of the Empire, these coins were of high purity, holding about 4.5 grams of pure silver. This coin, between the size of a modern nickel and dime, was worth approximately a day’s wages for a skilled laborer or craftsman. The major silver coin used during the first 220 years of the empire was the denarius. However, the city of Rome itself had only 1 million people, and costs kept rising as the empire became larger.Īdministrative, logistical, and military costs kept adding up, and the Empire found creative new ways to pay for things.Īlong with other factors, this led to hyperinflation, a fractured economy, localization of trade, heavy taxes, and a financial crisis that crippled Rome. Trade generated vast wealth for the citizens of Rome. It was trade that allowed a wide variety of goods to be imported into its borders: beef, grains, glassware, iron, lead, leather, marble, olive oil, perfumes, purple dye, silk, silver, spices, timber, tin and wine. How could such a powerful empire collapse? The Roman Economy Even concepts of Roman justice still stand tall, such as being “innocent until proven guilty”. ![]() Our alphabet, calendar, languages, literature, and architecture borrow much from the Romans. The Empire built 50,000 miles of roads, as well as many aqueducts, amphitheatres, and other works that are still in use today. Rome had conquered much of the known world. The Money Project is an ongoing collaboration between Visual Capitalist and Texas Precious Metals that seeks to use intuitive visualizations to explore the origins, nature, and use of money.Īt its peak, the Roman Empire held up to 130 million people over a span of 1.5 million square miles. Currency and the Collapse of the Roman Empire
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