Question about silver, gold, mining..and lack of them

[Sardaukar]

I seem to recall there was some shortage of coinage starting from 3rd century...and I remember vaguely that one reason was that many existing mines were exhausted. Mining techniques were not advanced enough to continue production, being one reason for shortage of rare metals.

Was this true ?

Have I been hallucinating with too much beer..or can someone point me to sources ?

Thanks in advance !

[Sardaukar]

Nobody ?? Am I on wrong forum ?

[Carlton Bach]

More like you've asked a question that's extremely difficult to answer. AFAIK the theory has been proposed by economic historians based on an assumption of the amount of precious metals in circulation and archeological evidence from a few excavated mines. We have the problem that we really don't know (at least not according to the books I've read)

- how good Roman mining techniques really were

- how many mines they had in use

- where these were

- how much silver and gold ever were in circulation.

Which means, the answer to your question may well be "ask us again in a hundred years or so". For example, there are many silver deposits in the Rhine area, but we do not know terribly well which, if any, were mined by the Romans, thus also no idea for how long or how extensively.

I am slightly better oriented on the question of medieval silver supply, and the bare fact is a) in the 10-12 centuries, a large amount of silver entered the European economies, precipitating the growth that gave us the high middle ages and b) we have no clue whatsoever where it came from. Things are liable to be similar in this regard.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

I know there were mines in Greece, and northern Macedonia, which I would imagine, if still viable, were exploited by the Romans. When they were depleted would require an expert to answer tho.

[zugislander]

As I recall the "late third Century coin shortage" had more to do with hoarding caused by Diocletian's re-minting than an actual shortage of specie, but I have no sources to hand, nor the mind to even begin looking right now. Sorry to be of so little help, but my wife gave birth Friday to our fourth daughter, and I am watching the other three while she recovers, and thus kind of scattered at this time.

Good Luck.

Cordially,

Michael

[Sardaukar]

Thanks. I think I might read this from Delbruck's History of the Art of War or something..which is bit outdated.. 8)

But I definitely did read it from some book...

[Sardaukar]

Found some literature about it:

The Roman Empire at Bay: Ad 180-395 By David Stone Potter for example mentions following:

When state could not meet it's need for silver by increasing production, a problem that may have been compounded by a decline in the productivity of Spanish mines that had supplied the great deal of the silver in early Empire, it had to take old coins out of circulation, and, as it did so, there was consistent tendency to debase silver thru admixture of bronze.


Money and Government in the Roman Empire By Richard Duncan-Jones mentions silver shortage too.

Found couple more books too that mention it, including Delbruck's History of the Art of War.

[Paullus Scipio]

....I think this idea arises from the fact that Late Roman coinage becomes more 'debased', but shortage of precious metals isn't the only possible reason - demand may have been on the increase too....and consider modern coinages becoming less'precious' although our world is not short of precious metals.....
Certainly demand must have been a big factor - as an example, between 200 B.C and 170 B.C. income from spanish silver mines tripled from 500 to 1500 Talents ( at a time when income from booty went down from an average 1200 Talents or so to 200 Talents), and overall income increased, but issue of denarii went down from 20 million odd to 11 million odd, demonstrating that coin issue was not tied to precious metal availability...other complex economic factors were at work.

Thus there is no simple answer to your query, instead an answer would have to look at all the economic factors.......

[Caratacus]

One of the reasons that good-old GJC invaded Britannia in 55/54 BC was supposed to be that these islands were fair dripping with metals. I dare say that it had something to do with Claudius' expedition as well! After all, these islands were known to the Phoniceans as the "Cassiterides" (Tin Islands), so there was some justification for this belief. Tin, Copper and Arsenic were, of course, extracted from Cornwall right up to the 19th century (there is still one 'working' tin mine in Cornwall, recently re-opened).

Added to that there are the lead mines in the Mendips, as well as parts of South Wales and (of course) the gold mines at Cloggau and Dolaucothi in North Wales. Extraction of metals was an imperial monopoly, as witnessed by the bars of metals recovered that have the imperial stamp on them. The Welsh gold mines were worked by a 'placer' method, whereby water was dammed and then allowed to flow rapidly down over the rocks, washing outy the gold-bearing gravel as it went. Traces of these dams are still visible in places.

I believe that the Romans extracted gold using a mercury amalgam method. So far as I know, the only source of mercury in Europe was from Spain (it's still obtained from there even today, a place called Alameida, I believe - although my spelling may be out slightly). Gold will dissolve in mercury, which (provided the gold content does not rise too much) remains a liquid. The mercury is then boiled away, leaving the gold behind. Of course, as most known these days, mercury is highly toxic - so the Romans must have got through a fair number of slaves in this process.

Brass ('oricalcum' to the Romans) was not obtained through the admixture of copper and zinc. The latter metal was unknown to the Romans as such, although they knew of the ores (zinc blende and calamine, mainly). The process was an involved batch extraction and alloying and involved several stages with different temperatures. It probably failed as often as it succeeded! It might be of interest to note that it has been suggested that the reason that lorica segmentata went out of use was that the various fitments (brass) became harder to obtain as the supply of copper and zinc decreased, parallel with the 3rd century loss of coinage metal. Nice idea - difficult to prove I would imagine! It could just be a coincidence, of course.

None of this really answers the question as originally posed but it may suggest that there are more complex reasons for a decrease in the metal supply than we know about. I vaguely remember from my school economic history course that there was inflation in the 16th century because of the vast amounts of gold and silver that the Spanish and Portuguese brought back from South America. That sounds a simple explanation - but I bet it wasn't that simple!

Caratacus
(Mike T.)

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

There was a place excavated on Timeteam on channel 4 tha twas so contaminated, I think with mercury, that the excavation was abandoned....
I could be wrong with the details tho' must have been highly toxic back then..

[S SEVERUS]

Here a list of books : http://oxrep.class.ox.ac.uk/index.php?o ... &Itemid=35

During the Classic period of Greek and Roman rule in the western world, gold and silver both flowed to India for spices, and to China for silk. At the height of the Empire (A.D. 98-160), Roman gold and silver coins reigned from Britain to North Africa and Egypt.

Maybe that the Roman empire exported more gold to other countries than in produced? I was under the assumption that the mining for gold in the roman empire declined after the 3the century because the mines got exhausted but I am not sure of this.

[Sardaukar]

Thanks for the book list ! Laudes for that and thanks to all !

My original question would have probably belonged to different subforum, but after all reading and talking about armour and weapons, I got interested about difficulties of financing a legion.

Seems that especially from Late Republic/Marius reforms, recruiting, equipping, training and upkeeping of a legion was monetary burden quite comparable to modern top-notch jet fighter squadron.

This got even more clear during Imperial times with regular "donations" to legions after succession etc.

Like old saying goes: "Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics"...
:lol: 8)