ROMAN COINS It was comparatively late in her history that Rome emerged from obscurity and became a great city. The adoption of a coinage was one of the most significant signs of the change. In very early times Rome had reckoned values in oxen and sheep, hence the word petunia (money), from the same root as pecus (head of cattle). Later she began to use bronze as a means of payment,—but as yet only in rough, unstamped lumps (Aes rude), not as coins. The later tradition represents her as ridiculously poor in the precious metals, and the little that we know confirms it.
The exact date at which Rome passed on to the use of metallic currency is subject to some doubt. It is certainly not earlier than 338 B.C. (the date proposed by E. J. Haeberlin), and a strong case can be made for a date rather later. The Roman authors, who attributed the innovation to the king Servius Tullius, had no real knowledge of the facts. The first pieces issued were heavy cast coins of bronze (Aes Grave) representing the As, the unit, a pound of bronze and its subdivisions—semis, (1), triens (1), quadrans (+), sextans uncia cumbrous coinage that needed wagons to transport it. It seems to be a clumsy attempt to apply the Greek institution of coinage to the bronze system of Italy. But very soon afterwards silver also was issued in the Roman name ; its superior convenience was soon felt and, of ter the First Punic War at latest, it ranked as the chief metal in the Roman market.
The earliest Roman silver coins were didrachms struck on a standard familiar in Campania and issued in part at least in that district. They are coins of a normal Greek pattern and with the small token bronze that accompanies them, were clearly meant to circulate in districts accustomed to Greek coins—that is to say in Campania and its neighbourhood, Lucania and Bruttium and to some extent Samnium and Apulia. The coinage, whether we regard it as primarily military or commercial, certainly arose in the course of the great wars, which ended in making Rome supreme in Italy by about 27o s.c. It represents one result of the closer contact of Rome with the Greek south.
The Aes Grave, to a large extent, runs in series parallel to the silver, but can hardly have circulated in the same districts. It is simplest to regard it as the counterpart of the silver coinage, issued for Rome and her Italian allies, in North Italy, Latium, the Sabine country and, to some extent, Samnium and Apulia. As Haeberlin has demonstrated, Rome's first system of coinage is a dual one : it is only unified, when the more cumbrous Italic system yields to the Greek. Our knowledge of details is as yet very imperfect. There are variations in the weight of the As or pound, which do not answer to any obvious explanation ; there is a reduction in the weight of the didrachm, which may or may not be due to inflation in the Pyrrhic War. We do not know how the didrachm and the As were related. Fortunately, the historical meaning of the coinage is clear. Rome began to open her doors to Greek ways and she was soon followed by her colonies in the South—Cales, Suessa, Teanum, which struck didrachms like hers— and by other colonies, in districts less Greek, which cast Aes Grave—Hatria in Picenum, for example, and Luceria in Apulia, or by independent cities such as Iguvium and Tuder in Umbria.
It was under the strain of the Punic Wars that Roman Re publican coinage assumed the form in which we know it best. The denarius, traditionally assigned to 269-268 B.c., replaced the didrachm as the main Roman silver piece; it was equal in value to I o asses, while its half, the quinarius, equalled 5, its fourth, the sestertius 21. The As, originally a pound in weight, was reduced to about 5 oz. ; then by slow descent to little more than 3 oz., again to 2 oz. and finally to r oz. Gold was issued on two separate occasions, as an emergency coinage—once in 217 B.C., once perhaps earlier. One fact, which has been obscured by modern writers, is the issue of Aes Grave, with the reverse type, in great masses during the First Punic War; Rome was short of silver and fell back upon her native Italian bronze and the strain of the war led to inflation, expressed in the reduction of the weight of the bronze unit, the As.