The decline and fall of the Roman currency empire

Mar 26th 2026|5 min read

In 1847 a few poor labourers living near Kottayam, a city in what is now the Indian state of Kerala, stumbled upon a hoard of gold coins. They exchanged these for a day’s worth of rice or a few rupees. The merchants who got the coins at knock-down prices melted them into jewellery or ornaments, oblivious that they were destroying 1,800-year-old Roman artefacts. Luckily for archaeologists, some of the stash survived. The coins have proved priceless for the study of economics, too, as an early example of a global currency. The same gold aurei have shown up in dig sites as far away as Scotland.