Diocletian's accession in 284 AD followed the murder of Numerian, whose decomposing body had been carried in a litter for days before the smell betrayed what his father-in-law Aper had concealed. Diocletian executed Aper personally in front of the troops. The coinage that followed was issued by a man who understood, with unusual clarity, that the previous fifty years of military anarchy had been partly sustained by monetary chaos — debased silver so thin it was barely distinguishable from bronze.
The currency reform of 294 introduced the argenteus and restructured billon production, but pieces struck before that reform, like earlier examples of this type, circulated through one of the most deliberate reimaginings of Roman imperial authority in the third century.
Diocletian's accession in 284 AD followed the murder of Numerian, whose decomposing body had been carried in a litter for days before the smell betrayed what his father-in-law Aper had concealed. Diocletian executed Aper personally in front of the troops. The coinage that followed was issued by a man who understood, with unusual clarity, that the previous fifty years of military anarchy had been partly sustained by monetary chaos — debased silver so thin it was barely distinguishable from bronze.
The currency reform of 294 introduced the argenteus and restructured billon production, but pieces struck before that reform, like earlier examples of this type, circulated through one of the most deliberate reimaginings of Roman imperial authority in the third century.