Recall that that other scholar stated that Roman's coins were in proportion to their ACTUAL precious-metal content.
What is that precious metal ACTUALLY worth though?
I contend that it is worth exactly what people think it is worth, and that almost all of its worth comes from the expectation that others will value it.
It has a tiny value as a utilitarian object - something people want to keep, rather than to trade.
As a raw material, gold has few uses and is in massive oversupply; If there were twice as much of it, we wouldn't see twice as much used (rather than stored), because people don't have much non-monetary use for the stuff.
It's good as money
because it has little "intrinsic" worth; It's basically useless.
It's proof against inflation, because it's very difficult to increase the amount of it that exists, and in this respect it is just like Bitcoin. And just like Bitcoin, this is a bug, not a feature, and makes it a poor choice as money in any economy whose rate of growth isn't linked to the rate at which it can be obtained.
The existence of scholars who fail to grasp that precious metal has little value other than that "people imagine that other people will also value it" isn't evidence that precious metal is valuable in some bizarre "intrinsic" sense.
There are plenty of very serious and well respected scholars who believe in gods, so finding one who believes that the value of useless metal exists
independently of the beliefs of those trading in it isn't surprising, even if it is disappointing.
Gold has a tiny utilitarian value, plus a huge and entirely arbitrary value derived
ONLY from the expectation that other people will accept it in exchange for things of genuine utilitarian worth. This has been true since the very first use of gold as money.
Banknotes are
in no way different from gold, other than in having a supply that can be increased without digging a really big hole first, or stealing them from the natives of the New World.
If Roman gold coins had value that was "the actual value of the metal", how is it that the number of loaves of bread or pints of beer that one can exchange for a given amount of gold is wildly different today than it was in 100CE? Has the "actual" value of eating changed so radically in two millennia?