THE MONETARY SYSTEMS OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS

For decades the history of money in the classical world was a fairly quiet Weld. It was almost universally supposed to be synonymous with the study of numismatics, and the most debated questions concerned coinage—why it came into being in the Wrst place, when it spread to the various regions, when and by how much it was debased, whether it was possible to calculate the quantity of it that was produced or in circulation in this period or that.