The Ottoman empire did as the Romans do and debased it's currency as it ran into trouble.
The golden age was gone and due to rapid inflation so was the age of silver.
Similar patterns exists in many empires.
Roman debasement of its currency accelerated after the end of the "five good emperors" and the start of the thirty Merda emperors.
Byzantine debasement of it's currency when they faced the Arab conquests in the 7th century.
The financial position of the Byzantine empire was already not stellar in the early 7th century.
More Byzantine debasement to fight the Turks in the 11th century.
By 1250s Byzantine coins had a bad reputation
More.
By 1453 everything must go.
After a series of civil wars Ptolemy X left Egypt to Rome in his will in 88 BC and the kingdom was under threat of Roman annexation.
The financial state of the latter Ptolemaics
Parthian debasement during the empire, also noticeably in the middle of the first century BC when they tangled with Rome. This is part of the conflict in which Crassus squared off against the Parthians.
The Sasanian were more responsible, only seriously debasing the coinage early on during the wars against Rome. In 283 the Roman emperor Carus even sacked the capital of Ctesiphon yet his campaign ended after he was struck by lightning.
Also some debasement during Yazdegerd II war against both the Huns and Romans and toward the end of empire under Yazdegerd III.
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The share of rulers whose birth year is known can be used as a measure of the quality of recordkeeping in a given society at a particular time.
When the elite bureaucracy that produces and maintains historical records is poor, we get the names of rulers but not accurate numerical information, such as the year of their birth.
Statistical evidence for the previous statement can be seen in the fact that medieval European regions with a greater share of rulers with a known birth year have a higher per capita production of manuscripts and higher rates of numeracy among the elite( by looking at the degree of age heaping in their recorded ages).
Now, keeping all this in mind, let us look at the quality of recordkeeping since the start of the Roman Republic. 🧵
Rulers in the time of the Roman Republic were the consuls. Due to various historical reasons, we have data on all Roman consuls, 737 people, serving between 509 BC - 31 BC.
The % of whose birth year is known by century can be extracted from the digital prospography of Rome.
We can see that record-keeping before 300 BC in the Roman Republic was extremely poor. This is something that is often attributed to the Celtic siege of Rome, 380 BC, but probably has more to do with low rates of literacy in Italic languages at the time.
What Luwian hieroglyphics looked like.
Luwian was the main language spoken on the western coast of Anatolia in the Bronze Age, and was likely the language of Homeric Troy.
This inscription was found in Hattuša, the Capital of the Hittites.
Ruina montium, "wrecking of mountains", A Roman mining technique in which pressurized water was used to crack mountain walls.
Pliny's description: "The third method will have outdone the achievements of the Giants. By means of galleries driven for long distances the mountains are mined by the light of lamps—the spells of work are also measured by lamps, and the miners do not see daylight for many months.
The name for this class of mines is arrugiae; also cracks give way suddenly and crush the men who have been at work, so that it actually seems less venturesome to try to get pearls and purple-fishes out of the depth of the sea: so much more dangerous have we made the earth!"
"Las Médulas, the most important gold mine in the Roman Empire. The spectacular landscape resulted from the ruina montium mining technique"
Since the invention of exact perspective in the 1420s, which was followed by other artistic innovations, the price of paintings in Renaissance Italy tripled.
This is true even when controlling for characteristics of the painting and who painted them, indicating that the increase in the quality of paintings driven by these innovations was driving up demand, making paintings more profitable.
"The expected compensations of a young apprentice (unaware of his future talent) were increasing during the fifteenth century. But a similar increase in profitability also applies conditioning on the talent of the painter...reaches levels in the 1480s that are about three times those of the 1420s."
"This evolution suggests a Schumpeterian pattern. Part of the artistic creativity associated with Renaissance, and the artistic innovations of this period, such as the introduction of exact perspective (since the 1420s), oil colors (around the 1470s), the sfumato (with Leonardo)"