Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/385

 standards. The centumpondium or 100 weight therefore he takes as his prime unit. But besides the talent and the mina and the centumpondium and libra or as, according to Mr Soutzo, "all the Italian peoples availed themselves of an intermediate weight unit: this was the nomos or decussis . This unit was the libral nomos, the twelfth of the heavy talent, being worth ten minae or librae, and the libral decussis, the tenth of the centumpondium, weighing 10 librae." The monetary nomos and decussis, he thinks, played an important part in the history of Italian coinage. He admits however that no specimen of either nomos or decussis of libral standard is known, the heaviest being a decussis of the Roman triental (one-third) standard, whilst the pieces from Venusia and Teanum Apulum marked N I and N II (nomos and double nomos), representing 10 and 20 minas respectively, belong to a still much more reduced standard. The simple multiples of the as (libra) and litra, such as the tripondius and dupondius, were just as rarely cast in the libral epoch. The mina or the as with their fractions, on the contrary, were the kinds most employed: originally the series was ordinarily composed of the as (marked I or sometimes ), the semis (S), the triens, the quadrans , the sextans (..), the uncia (.) and semuncia ([Greek: S]). In some series the as is rare and the semis is wanting, but in addition to the other denominations here given the quincunx (:·:) and the dextans (S, 1 semis + 4 unciae) are found. The presence or absence of these pieces characterizes certain Italian and Sicilian monetary systems. All the evidence virtually which can be produced by Soutzo for this hypothetical nomos is that at Syracuse the Corinthian stater of 135 grs. was called a decalitron, that the Tarentine didrachm of 128 grs. (max.) was similarly divided into 10 litras, that the Romans employed the tenfold of the as (decussis) and when they coined silver called their silver unit a denarius as representing 10 copper asses, and the fact that certain copper coins such as those of Arpi, called nomi, were evidently regarded as containing 10 units, the half being the quincunx. But, as we have already seen, the real explanation of these coins seems to be that they represent