iron rigour with which they
were applied, stands alone in antiquity and has been but rarely
paralleled even in modern times.

Yet it had also its weak point. According to a custom, common
in all antiquity, but which reached its highest development at
Carthage,(44) the Roman government issued along with the good
silver -denarii- also -denarii- of copper plated with silver, which
had to be accepted like the former and were just a token-money
analogous to our paper currency, with compulsory circulation and
recourse on the public chest, inasmuch as it also was not entitled
to reject the plated pieces. This was no more an official
adulteration of the coinage than our manufacture of paper-money,
for they practised the thing quite openly; Marcus Drusus proposed
in 663, with the view of gaining the means for his largesses of
grain, the sending forth of one plated -denarius- for every seven
silver ones issuing fresh from the mint; nevertheless this measure
not only offered a dangerous handle to private forgery, but
designedly left the public uncertain whether it was receiving
silver or token money, and to what total amount the latter was
in circulation. In the embarrassed period of the civil war and
of the great financial crisis they seem to have so unduly availed
themselves of plating, that a monetary crisis accompanied the
financial one, and the quantity of spurious and really worthless
pieces rendered dealings extremely insecure. Accordingly during
the Cinnan government an enactment was passed by the praetors and
tribunes, primarily by Marcus Marius Gratidianus,(45) for redeeming
all the token-money by silver, and for that purpose an assay-office
was established. How far the calling-in was accomplished,
tradition has not told us; the coining of token-money itself
continued to subsist.

As to the provinces, in accordance with the setting aside of gold
money on principle, the coining of gold was nowhere permitted, not
even in the client-states; so that a gold coinage at this period
occurs only where Rome had nothing at all to say, especially among
the Celts to the north of the Cevennes and among the states in
revolt against Rome; the Italians, for instance, as well as
Mithradates Eupator struck gold coins. The government seems to
have made efforts to bring the coinage of silver also more and more
into its hands, particularly in the west. In Africa and Sardinia
the Carthaginian gold and silver money may have remained