the despot Dionysius (405-345 B.C.) gold was to silver as 15 : 1; (3) that certain symbols on the gold coins of Etruria when interpreted as referring to silver litrae give the proportion between the metals as 16 : 1. The same answer can dispose of the first two arguments. The state of affairs both at Rome in B.C. 207, and at Syracuse under Dionysius, was quite exceptional. Rome was in a state of bankruptcy, her subjects largely in revolt, the Lex Oppia (215 B.C.) prevented women from wearing more than half an ounce of gold ornaments[1]. It is therefore irrational to treat as normal the relation found to exist between the metals at such a crisis.
Similarly at Syracuse the relations between the metals were completely upset by the wild conduct of Dionysius, who forced his subjects to take coins of tin at the same rate as though they were silver. Moreover any evidence to be drawn with reference to the ratio between silver and gold at Syracuse in the time of Dionysius is completely nullified by the fact that in the reign of Agathocles (B.C. 307) gold was to silver as 12 : 1[2]. It is evident therefore that if in 207 B.C. gold was to silver all over Italy as 16 : 1, there must have been a great appreciation of gold. Are we not then justified in regarding the ratio of 16 : 1 as exceptional, and that of 12 : 1 as the more regular? That great fluctuations in the relations of the metals did take place in Italy, we know from a statement of Polybius that in his own time in consequence of the great output of gold from a mine in Noricum gold went down one-third in value. Silver was scarce in Central Italy, for it was only after the conquest of Magna Graecia that Rome found herself in a position to issue a silver currency. On the other hand there must have been a large and constant supply of gold coming down from the gold-fields of the Alps in exchange for the bronze wares of Etruria. Now as at Athens, where silver was so plenty and gold in earlier days scarce, the ratio was never higher than 15 : 1, it is impossible to suppose that in Northern and Central Italy, where the conditions were contrariwise, the ratio can ever have been in ordinary times higher than 12 : 1.
