Troy
each. But his successors, though they did not again dehase the
standard, rapidly curtailed the weight, so that few of theirs exceed 30
grs. Again, double denarii were coined, of which one thousand were
equivalent to a pound of gold : which gave them the name of milliarenses. The
few denarii struck by Justinian and the Italian Goths seem intended for
20 grs. Roman, but only equal 15 Troy. These light denarii were the
parents of the Anglo-Saxon silver penny (of the same weight), a coin
that can now boast, through its English line, an unbroken succession of
1300 years.
It
remains to me an inexplicable mystery why the Eepublic, whose sole
circulating medium for fully 200 years was silver, should never have
followed the example of the Sicilians with whom she was in so long and
intimate an intercourse, and have perceived the convenience of having
coins of a larger denomination than the single denarius. But so it was:
even a double-denarius of the Eepublic remains yet to be discovered.
The Byzantine emperors, virtually an Asiatic race, from the very
beginning coined but little silver : after the 5th century their
currency (with exceptions not worth noticing) consisted entirely of
gold, issued largely also in small subdivisions, trientes or thirds of the aureus,* and of copper, beginning with enormous clumsy folles (of
which 210 and after Justinian 180 went to the solidus) ; expedients
intended to remedy the absence of the denarius and its half the
victoriatus.
Forgery of
the current coin seems to have been almost coaeval with the very
invention of striking money. Very shortly after that epoch, Herodotus
makes Poly-crates, the tyrant of Samos, buy off his Lacedemonian
invaders in lead pieces plated with gold struck for
* Or solidus, of 6 to the Roman ounce, or 72 grs. Troy each at first. It stood for many centuries at 60 grs. = 12 shillings.
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