The Romans still physically debased their money, and in the late Western empire, this was a strong contributor to its inability to hold onto its military units

The Romans still physically debased their money, and in the late Western empire, this was a strong contributor to its inability to hold onto its military units as citizens and barbarians became increasingly unwilling to accept denarii as pay. Thus, the erosion of its authority and the rise of barracks emperors. I should note that much later in the Eastern empire, after a long period of wallowing in inflation, corruption, and an ineffectual army, Anastasius I reformed the monetary system by refining the purities (and thus supplies) of coinage, which allowed him to clamp down on the state's accounting and tighten up the army. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasius_I_Dicorus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasius_I_Dicorus