THE AGE of COINAGE Lydia, Greece, Rome, and Birth Minting Debasement: MONEY CHRONICLES Volume II

The Age of Coinage is the second volume of The Money Chronicles, a ten-part history of money from the ancient world to today. Volume I ended at a threshold: societies that had already solved nearly every problem money exists to solve, lacking only a compact, pre-verified physical form. This volume crosses that threshold.The story runs from Lydia's invention of the stamped coin, through its explosive spread across the Greek city-states - Athens's silver owl, Sparta's deliberate rejection of coined money, Alexander's release of a hoarded Persian fortune into circulation across three continents - and into Rome, where the denarius became the backbone of an empire's military and administrative machine for four centuries.The book's second half turns to a darker theme: debasement. From Nero's first quiet reduction of the denarius's silver content to the catastrophic currency collapse of Rome's third-century crisis and Diocletian's attempted reforms, this volume traces what happens when a government discovers it can quietly tax its own citizens by hollowing out the coins it guarantees - a lesson in monetary trust, and its betrayal, with clear echoes into every later chapter of financial history.Featuring a full timeline, glossary, comparative coin denomination table, discussion questions, and further reading, The Age of Coinage sets the stage for Volume III's account of Byzantine gold and the reemergence of coinage and credit in medieval Europe.