228 EFFECT OF DEBASEMENT CHAP. ix. 



Banks has recently furnished the world with 

 an edict containing a very copious tariff of 

 prices which have been discovered at two distant 

 parts of the Roman empire. These the learned 

 Colonel Leake has Ascertained to have been 

 of the reign of the Emperor Diocletian in the 

 year 302, which followed a few years after 

 the great debasement of the coin under the 

 reigns of Caracalla, Alexander Severus, and 

 Gallien. 



The year 301 had been one of remarkable 

 dearth, and probably that circumstance might 

 have combined with the debasement of the coin 

 to create the tariff, and to raise the prices of all 

 commodities to the enormous height at which 

 the edict has fixed the maximum. How far 

 the prices were caused by the dearth, or how far 

 by the debasement, it is now impossible to 

 determine. 



The nominal prices taking the denarius at 

 the original value of that coin when it contained 

 sixty-five grains or the seventh part of an ounce 

 of pure silver, or seven-pence three farthings of 

 our money, if our shillings were, as they ought 

 to be, the sixty-second part of a pound, and not, 

 as they are, the sixty-sixth part of that weight 

 we find to be as follows. 



Oil of the first quality (oleiflos) . W pint 17 6 

 Oil of the second quality . . .0106 



Oil of coleseed 036 



