First Lycurgus 8th century BC monetary reform when Sparta’s wealth became overly concentrated. He posted 29 armed volunteers to spread fear in the marketplace. Lycurgus banned using gold and silver and used iron slugs for money. Furthermore those iron pieces were dipped in vinegar while hot, to render them brittle and purposely destroy any commodity value that they had as iron! They received their value through legal sanction. This nomisma system lasted over 3 centuries and Sparta became a premier power. It faltered when Sparta’s involvement in empire regressed her back to gold and silver money and they lost the science of money.
REPUBLICAN ROME similarly based her money on copper, isolating herself from the East and “disenfranchising” the gold/silver hoards and therefore much of the power of the East. Gold could be traded as merchandise; but without the monetary power, the ability of the East to control Rome’s money was reduced and she had a better chance to control her destiny and rise to greatness. Roman Nomisma, were bronze discs legally valued far above their commodity content through the law.
Rome won the Punic wars, but they destroyed her money system and she regressed to Eastern moneys- first to silver, and then Julius Caesar established a gold standard using the weight system of the ancient temples. The growth of plutocracy accelerated; wealth concentrated in its hands and the population degenerated into slavery. Adopting the East’s money caused power and even the Empire’s headquarters to shift eastward to Byzantium.
The breakdown of law and money operated one upon the other for centuries in a downward spiral of societal decay. The concept of money regressed to crude metallism and the science of money was lost again, especially in the West.
Skipping ahead 15 centuries (see the Lost Science of Money book for what happenned in the meantime,
http://www.monetary.org/lostscienceofmoney)
From time to time elements of this monetary knowledge surfaced as in England’s 1601 Mixt Money’s Case, or Philosopher George Berkeley’s 1735 book Querest.
THE SCIENCE wasn’t recovered until 1690 in the American Colonies, where money was publicly controlled and successfully used to benefit society. And then in 1694 in the formation of the privately controlled Bank of England where the science was grossly misused, spawning warfare and famine. (
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