The best Roman emperor debased the currency the least. That is the only ruler you should measure by.
Augustus minted the denarius at roughly 95 percent silver and kept it there. Prices stayed stable for decades. Trade flowed across the Mediterranean because a merchant in Alexandria trusted the coin a merchant in Gaul handed him. Sound money built that empire, not the legions.
Then came the rot. Nero started in 64 AD, clipping the denarius to about 90 percent silver. He needed to pay for his fire-ravaged Rome and his own excess, so he stole purchasing power from every Roman who held a coin.
By Caracalla in 215 AD, silver content sat near 50 percent. He also invented the antoninianus — a coin marked as two denarii that carried the silver of one and a half. Fraud stamped in metal.
Then the worst: Gallienus around 265 AD, when the "silver" denarius held maybe 5 percent silver and looked like a bronze slug dipped in a shine. Prices exploded. The empire’s economy fractured into barter.
Diocletian answered in 301 AD with the Edict on Maximum Prices. He blamed merchants for the inflation he and his predecessors caused, then set price ceilings on over a thousand goods with death as the penalty. Sellers pulled their goods. Shortages spread. He created the disaster and then punished the people trying to survive it.
Augustus kept his hands off the silver. Gallienus and Diocletian robbed the whole empire and called it governance.
The metal never lies about the man.
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