[520] Other emperors, however, struck single nummia, and these may have remained in use. They are known to collectors and weigh 5 grs. and upwards.
[521] See the specimens figured by Ducange, CP. Christ., or in other works on numismatics.
[522] The Macedonian kings in the fifth century B.C. were the first princes to put their names and portraits on their coinage, but the practice did not become common till after Alexander the Great; cf. Procopius, De Bel. Goth., iii, 33. Very large gold medals were minted by most of the Roman emperors, weighing even one or two lb. Hist. Aug., Alexander, 39. This imposing coinage appears to have been used for paying subsidies or tribute to barbarian nations. They were carried slung over the backs of horses in those leathern bags, which we see in the Notitia among the insignia of the Counts of the Treasury; Cod., XII, li, 12; Paulus Diac., De Gest. Langob., iii, 13.
[523] The value of money in relation to the necessaries of life, always a shifting quantity, was not very different in these ages to what it is at present. To give a few examples: bread was about the same price, common shoes cost 1s. 6d. to 5s. a pair; a workman, according to skill, earned 1s. 6d. to 4s. a day; see Dureau de la Malle, Econ. polit. des Romains, Paris, 1840; also Waddington’s Edict of Diocletian; an ordinary horse fetched £10 or £12; Cod. Theod., XI, i, 29, etc. On the Byzantine coinage see Sabatier, Monnaies Byzant., etc., Paris, 1862, i, p. 25, et seq. An imperfect, but so far the only comprehensive work; cf. Finlay, Hist. Greece, i, p. 432, et seq. Mommsen’s work also gives some space to the subject. False coining and money-clipping were of course prevalent in this age and punishable capitally, but there was also a class of magnates who arrogated to themselves the right of coining, a privilege conceded in earlier times, and who maintained private mints for the purpose. In spite of legal enactments some of them persisted in the practice, and their penalty was to be aggregated with all their apparatus and operatives to the Imperial mints, there to exert their skill indefinitely for the government; Cod. Theod., IX, xxi, xxii. Their lot suggests the Miltonic fate of Mulciber:
Nor aught availed him now
To have built in heaven high towers; nor did he ’scape
By all his engines, but was headlong sent
With his industrious crew to build in hell.
Paradise Lost, I.
[524] In 1885, a “guess” census taken by the Turkish authorities put it at 873,565, but the modern city is much shrunk within the ancient walls; Grosvenor, op. cit., p. 8.