Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/390

 bronze series. Thus the Etruscan silver staters of the period prior to 350, which weigh 130 grs., are marked X, whilst the coins of the same weight at a later epoch are marked XX, showing that the copper unit had undergone a change. This Soutzo thinks was simply a reduction from the triental to the sextantal foot, and in no wise due to any change in the relative value of silver and copper. That however both influences may have aided in the change will be made clear from the history of the reduction of the Roman denarius and as in the second Punic war. Finally when the Romans coined their first denarii in 268, the libella or tenth of the denarius, which represented in silver the copper libra, was only 7 grs., an indubitable proof that the as was but then a mere fraction of its former self. Yet all the same it is clear that this silver denarius, which represented a reduced decussis of bronze, had its ultimate source in nothing else than the 10 libral asses which represented the value of a sheep. Are we not then justified in suggesting that the Etruscan stater of 135 grs. marked X had a like origin, that the 10 litra piece or noummos of Tarentum of almost the same weight, and the Syracusan 10 litra piece of 135 grs., had also a similar origin, whilst at an earlier period 10 Aeginetic obols (the nomi of the poems of Epicharmus and Sophron) were the equivalent of the same animal? Ten nomi were the price of a calf in the time of Epicharmus, and as we have seen already the value of a sheep and a young calf is always about the same, even down to the present day. Roman System.

Although it is not our concern to go into the history of Roman money, it is nevertheless necessary to give the reader a short sketch of its principal features in order to make the history of the Roman weight standards intelligible.

First came oxen and sheep, which according to their age and sex bore definite relations to each other, and by which all other values were measured. From an early period (at least 1000 ) copper was in use, not yet however weighed, but estimated