X @Balaji

True, but they just delayed the inevitable.The debasement was underway.Then hard men reintroduced hard money.The siliqua and the solidus.But that actually caused a shock.Rome was used to inflation via taxation.Now they had to raise real taxes.So the burden of empire became visible.And Rome still went to zero in 476 AD.Ben Landau-Taylor (@benlandautaylor):I hadn’t appreciated how close the Crisis of the Third Century came to ending the whole thing for good. It was on the path of a standard late imperial crac ...