Summary and Conclusions

Abstract

During the second century, the combination of increased inflows of bullion (which resulted in a significant expansion in the minting of Roman silver denarii) and the contemporaneous expansion of the availability of credit generated considerable growth in monetary liquidity, until the credit crisis of 88 and the monetary problems of the 80s produced a change in the institutional structure of credit provision. This growth in turn resulted in a major upward inflection in Roman economic activity, and the creation both of a more complex system of production and distribution and of an enormous material culture that was to reach its height under the Principate. A probabilistic quantification of the performance of the Italian economy during the period 150 to 50 bc suggests that Rome, in the late second and early first centuries bc, was a coherent economic entity experiencing real per capita economic growth.