Babs

RT to get the attention of all the kids out there...demand to be paid in SILVER. It holds its value. Government lives a very short life after devaluing its money vs silver..... just a warning to the wise. And look what AI has to say about the silver dime...and the governments that fucked with it... The coin is the Roman denarius (plural denarii). “Dinarius” is the usual English misspelling. It is not the etymological parent of the word dime—that comes from Old French disme, “tenth,” from Latin decimus—but it is the closest ancient analogue: a small, everyday silver “tenner,” about the diameter of a U.S. dime, that paid a day’s wage and then spent four centuries being quietly gutted of its silver. The name itself is arithmetic. Denarius is from Latin deni, “containing ten.” When the Republic first struck it in the Second Punic War, around 211 BC, one denarius equaled ten bronze asses. Early pieces carried an X to advertise that rate. About 141 BC the bronze as had shrunk so far that the tariff was raised to sixteen asses; the name stayed. Physically it sits next to the dime. Republican and early imperial denarii run roughly 18–20 mm across and, at first, about 4.5 g of nearly fine silver (1/72 of a Roman pound, 95–98% Ag). A modern U.S. dime is 17.91 mm. Silver U.S. dimes from 1873–1964 weigh 2.50 g at 90% silver—2.25 g fine, or 0.07234 troy oz. Same pocket size; the Roman coin simply held more metal. ma-shops.comRoman Republic Q. Marcius Libo AR Denarius. EF+/EF. 148 BC. The Dioscuri. | MA-Shops Early types are the classic Republican look: helmeted Roma on the obverse, the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux) galloping on the reverse, ROMA in the exergue. Later moneyers and emperors turned the coin into a billboard—family claims, then living portraits. A legionary’s daily pay in the late Republic and early Empire was commonly cited as one denarius. Silver history of the denarius is a long, then sudden, debasement: c. 211 BC: ~4.5 g, ~95–98% silver. Augustus (after 27 BC): weight eased to ~3.9 g (1/84 pound); purity still high. Nero, AD 64: after the Great Fire, weight cut to ~3.4 g (1/96 pound) and fineness to ~93–94%. The first famous “stealth tax.” 2nd century: slow bleed—Antoninus Pius around 83%, Marcus Aurelius lower still. Septimius Severus / Caracalla (early 200s): ~50% silver. Caracalla then issued the antoninianus, tariffed at two denarii but containing far less than double the silver. Crisis of the Third Century: Gallienus-era pieces often under 10% silver, then bronze cores with a silver wash. Regular issue of the denarius as a real silver coin ends under Gordian III (238–244). The name lingered as a unit of account. By the time Diocletian’s price edict of 301 AD tried to freeze wages and prices, a “denarius” was a ghost of the original coin. The linguistic afterlife is larger than the metal: Italian denaro, Spanish dinero, Portuguese dinheiro, the Islamic dinar, and the old British penny abbreviation d.—all from denarius. The U.S. dime’s silvfindbullionprices.comer run is shorter and cleaner. First “disme,” 1796: 2.70 g at 89.24% silver. From 1837 the standard was 90% silver. After 1873 the circulating dime was a fixed 2.50 g / 2.25 g fine Ag until t he Coinage Act of 1965 replaced it with copper-nickel clad. That is the American version of Nero’s trick: same denomination, less (then zero) silver, because the metal in the coin had become worth more than the face. At a spot near $65 per troy ounce (17 September 2026): An early Republican denarius (~4.3 g fine) melts around $9. An Augustan piece (~3.8 g) around $8. A post-Nero denarius (~3.1–3.2 g) around $6.50–7. A common 90% U.S. dime melts around $4.70. A late-third-century “silver” denarius is worth its bronze plus a collector premium, not its silver. So the denarius is a precursor in the useful sense: a ten-unit silver workhorse the size of a dime, born honest, then spent down by the state that issued it. The dime repeated the last chapter in 1965. The metal does not forget.