Ill
PUBLIC FINANCES
CURRENCY, PUBLIC EXPENDITURE, BUDGET, PUBLIC REVENUE
I. THE CURRENCY
OF the Byzantine coinage it will suffice to say that from
Constantino to Alexius Comnenus the Emperors hardly ever
had recourse to the practice, then so common, of debasing
the coinage. In consequence, for many centuries the Byzan-
tine gold piece, the nomisma^ became a veritable international
coin.
But from the time of the Comneni and especially under
the Palaeologi, the practice of debasing the coinage became
frequent and gradually the gold coin, now known as the
hyperpyron, came to be worth but a third of its original value,
which was about 15 gold francs.1
The precious metals at that time had, of course, a far
greater purchasing value than they have in general to-day;
it is estimated that that purchasing value was five times
greater. Many modern historians, when quoting a figure
from the sources, are in the habit of multiplying it by
five. Thus Paparrigopoulos, who introduced this practice,
reckons the revenues of Constantinople at 530 million gold
francs because, according to the information of Benjamin
of Tudela, the Emperor drew an annual revenue from the
capital of 106 million gold francs. This method of calcula-
tion doubtless gives the reader a more concrete idea of what
this or that item of revenue or expenditure would represent
in present-day money, but it is perhaps safer simply to quote
the figures as they are given by our sources. As a matter of
fact, the purchasing value of gold and silver fluctuated very
much during the ten centuries of the Empire; and what is
more serious, there is no period during those centuries for
1 Byzantine literary sources mention moneys of account, such as the gold pound
(worth i,080 gold francs) and the silver pound (worth 75 gold francs), while on
the other hand, the gold nomisma was subdivided into milliaresia of silver, each
of which was subdivided into keratia.