Caracalla introduces the antoninianus
Caracalla issued a new silver coin, the antoninianus, in 215 AD and declared it worth two denarii. But the new coin weighed only about 1.5 times the denarius and contained a smaller percentage of silver. It was effectively a 25 percent debasement disguised as a new denomination. The antoninianus rapidly replaced the denarius in circulation because Gresham's law was already at work — the better coin (the old denarius) got hoarded and melted; the worse coin (the antoninianus) stayed in everyday exchange.
The rebrand trick was the innovation. It's the same pattern that would repeat nearly 1,800 years later with currency redenominations in Argentina, Brazil, and Zimbabwe — reset the numeraire to disguise the cumulative destruction of value.
01 · Coin Clipping
The earliest documented currency debasements happened in the Roman Empire, when emperors under fiscal strain began secretly reducing the precious-metal content of coins while leaving their face value unchanged. The mechanism was crude: mint the same denarius or antoninianus, but with less silver. Over roughly 240 years, the Roman silver coin went from about 97 percent silver under Augustus to under 2 percent silver during the Crisis of the Third Century. Each emperor who debased the coinage inherited a slightly lighter silver content and left it slightly lighter still.
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