As Soutzo has observed, the degradation of the local copper series moved on most unequal lines, and no doubt in some places the decussis did not represent perhaps one half the value of its archetype, the sheep, whilst at the same moment the copper unit in another community stood at almost its original weight and value. Where silver was coined the degradation of copper went on all the quicker; there was a tendency more and more to get rid of the old cumbrous copper coins, and to employ those of a lighter and more portable size. Moreover the inter-relations between copper and silver made the coinages in these metals act and react upon each other. Thus the state after reducing the copper would reduce likewise the silver, so as to make the two series correspond. This was probably facilitated in some cases at least by the change in the relative value of these metals. Italy was not a silver-producing region, whilst it was rich in copper. Naturally with the increase of commerce and the development of silver mines in neighbouring countries such as Spain, silver became more abundant and the price of copper rose accordingly. We have had occasion already to remark that the abundance or scarcity of gold or silver is indicated by its being employed or not for coinage. In the case of gold we know that it is only when the supply of that metal is in excess of its demand for purposes of ornament that it is or can be employed in the form of coined money. The history of the coinage of Persia, Lydia, Macedonia, Rhodes and elsewhere in ancient times, as well as the history of mediaeval gold coining, make this evident, whilst modern Hindustan teaches us the same lesson. Of course in times of great financial straits under the pressure of war a gold coinage was sometimes issued, as perhaps at Athens[439] in 407 B.C. and as at Rome during the second Punic war in 206 B.C. Backwardness in the coinage of silver among certain peoples is probably to be accounted for in the same way. The employment of iron money at Sparta (and Byzantium) was probably due to the dearth of precious metals rather than to any ordinance of Lycurgus against the employment of the latter. If accordingly we find that Rome did not coin silver until 268 B.C. we are justified in concluding that it was from want of silver she had been so long in following the example of the Etruscans and the Greeks.
It is certainly most significant that within four years after the capture of Tarentum (272 B.C.) and the subjugation of all Southern Italy we find her issuing a well-matured silver currency. Doubtless by her conquests she obtained a vast supply of the precious metal, for we know from the records of Livy and Pliny that great masses of foreign coins and bullion flowed into the treasury after every fresh conquest. We may therefore reasonably assume that previous to 272 B.C. silver had been much dearer in relation to copper.
But to return. We have seen that with the imprinting of some device on the primitive bars of copper, the tendency to reduce their weight would quickly evince itself. Accordingly it was possible that in certain places when the coinage of silver began, and there was still a desire to make the silver unit equal to the copper, the latter having been already reduced, the silver would be proportioned thereto. Thus when silver was first coined in some towns in Sicily, the silver Aeginetic obol of 16½ grs. was regarded as the equivalent of the copper litra, but when Syracuse started a coinage of Corinthian staters, a piece of silver of 13½ grs. was accounted as the litra.
But in other parts of Italy the process was somewhat different. For we find the silver unit when once fixed remaining the same in weight, but simply having its denomination altered to meet the requirements of certain changes in the bronze series. Thus the Etruscan silver staters of the period prior to 350 B.C., which weigh 130 grs., are marked 𐌢, whilst the coins of the same weight at a later epoch are marked 𐌢𐌢, 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 B.C., 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 𐌢 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 B.C.) copper was in use, not yet however weighed, but estimated by the bulk, as I have already described. Side by side with it ingots of gold and silver passed from hand to hand. Such ingots are mentioned by Varro under the name of bricks (lateres)[440]. Though this mention refers to a later period, we can yet infer from it with certainty that the practice of trafficking in small ingots of gold and silver prevailed in Italy as elsewhere. With gold came the art of weighing, which was also applied to silver. We have given reasons for believing that the weight-unit employed was the same as that which I have termed the ox-unit. We found the Etruscans, the close neighbours of the Romans, and who had access to the gold fields of Upper Italy, employing this unit as their standard from the commencement of their coinage in the 5th century for both gold and silver. Any of the towns of Southern Italy which struck gold, such as Metapontum, coined on the same standard, which was likewise employed for silver, sometimes a little reduced, by many communities, such as Tarentum. The standard ingot of gold would bear a known relation to that of silver, to the bar of bronze, the cow, and the sheep. We have given absolute proof of the relation between cattle and bronze in the 5th cent. B.C., and we may well infer similar constant relations between cattle and bronze, and the other metals. With greater exactness in commercial dealings the bronze rod was next weighed by the standard already in use for gold, and it was found that each of the 12 parts or unciae into which it was divided weighed just three times the ox-unit, that is, the weight of the small talent which we have found likewise in Macedon, Sicily, and Lower Italy, and which may have itself represented originally the conventional value of a slave, which was three cows among the Celts, the close kinsfolk of the Italians, and probably about the same among the early Greeks. As soon as the rods or asses were exchanged by weighing, they would quickly lose their original form, which was only required so long as it was necessary that they should be of certain fixed dimensions. Under the new system it mattered not whether an as was ·8 inches long, and three inches thick, provided only it was of full weight when placed in the scale. These are the pieces which are known as aes rude; as yet they are mere lumps of metal, without any stamp or device. Gaius well describes this stage: “For this reason bronze and the balance are employed (in mancipatio) because formerly they only employed bronze coins, and there were bars (asses), double bars (dupondii), half-bars (semisses) and quarters (quadrantes), nor was there any gold or silver coin in use, as we can learn from a law of the Twelve Tables, and the force and power of these coins depended not on their number but on weight. For as there were bars (asses) of a pound weight, there were also two pound bars (dupondii), whence even still the term dupondius is used, as if two in weight[441]. And the name is still retained in use.” The half-bars likewise and quarters were no doubt proportionately adjusted to weight. It will be observed that the omission of all mention of the decussis as a standard seems to throw additional doubt on Mr Soutzo’s hypothesis. The plain fact is that a mass of bronze ten pounds in weight would have been extremely cumbrous and unhandy for purposes of manufacture into the implements of everyday life.
Fig. 56. Romano-Campanian Coin.
