Coins in History

Coin collectors tend to be interested in rare coins. This book is about the common ones. The great interest of coinage is that it hold up a sort of mirror (sometimes only a dim one) to history, especial: to economic and social history. The coins which do this are above all those which were traded and spent again and again, whose names are written in every banker's ledger or housewife's accounts book, Shylock's ducats, for example, or the Pied Piper's guilders. It is these, considered against the background of the rise and decline of coinage a monetary instrument, which are the subject of this work. The story is a continuous one going back to the time of Diocletian. It would be a bold historian who suggested that the decisive break between the ancient and modern worlds took place so early as 2K Most would agree that it occurred during the economic and cultural hibernation which Europe underwent in the sixth and seventh centuries. However, an understanding of those years can only be reached by referring back to Diocletian and Constantine, so it is best to start with them.