[435] Étude des monnaies de l’Italie antique. Première partie, pp. 8 and 16.
[436] Ibid. p. 29.
[437] Ibid. p. 30.
[438] Soutzo, ibid. p. 31.
[439] If we take the καινὸν κόμμα of Aristophanes (Ranae 720) to refer, as the scholiast ad loc. asserts on the authority of Hellanicus and Philochorus, to a gold issue in B.C. 407, which was much alloyed. As Mr Head says it is quite possible that Aristophanes alludes to the new bronze coinage issued the year before the Frogs was acted (Hist. Num. 314). No such base gold coins of Athens are known, and as her gold coins are of excellent quality, it is better to refer them with Head to 394 B.C., the period of her restored prosperity, when Conon and Pharnabazus brought aid from the great king.
[440] Varro ap. Non. p. 356 nam lateres argentei atque aurei primum conflati atque in aerarium conditi. Lateres is used in this sense by Tacitus, Annals, XVI. 1.
[441] Gaius I. 122. This passage is unhappily corrupt. The Verona MS. runs asses librales erant et dupondii——unde etiam dupondius. As dupondius is really a masculine adjective used as a noun, a masculine noun must be understood, this can only be as. Dupondius then is simply a two-pound bar.
[442] XXXIII. 3. 13.
[443] Before striking silver at Rome the Romans had struck silver coins with type of quadriga and ROMA in Campania. Hence it is that Pliny regarded these the quadrigati and bigati as the oldest issue instead of the coins with the Dioscuri ([Fig. 54]). The biga came next, after it the genuine Roman quadriga.
[444] Varro, R. R. II. 1, 9.