The early weights and measures of mankind / by General Sir Charles Warren.

  • Charles Warren
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The early weights and measures of mankind / by General Sir Charles Warren. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    93/164 (page 69)
    pound) was divided into 24 Siliquce. The Siliqua, or, as the Greeks called it, Keration, was the seed of the carob (“ Origin of Currency,” Ridgway, p. 181). The Early Roman Pound and the Denarius. The original pound of Italy and the Romans was the old Hon of 6,912 O.G.T. The massive copper ingot in the Pembroke Collection, a Roman quadrussis (4 pounds) of early date weighing 27,662 G.l., at the rate of 6915-5 G.T. to the pound, is close on the weight of the old Hon of 6,912 O.G.T. This Aeris Libra, or pound weight of copper, belongs to a remote epoch in Italy, probably the fourth century b.c. (See Humphrey’s “ Coin Collector’s Manual,” p. 251). Had the Romans originated a silver coinage entirely for their own use, they would probably have adhered to the weight of the old Hon and its divisions into 32 shekels ; but as money weights were, in a great measure, for the purposes of exchanges with neighbouring tribes, they were bound to keep in touch with the highly civilised Greek and Asiatic tribes which had arrived in Italy in the early days of Rome, and which made use of the Moneyer’s pound of 5,400 O.G.T. for their silver coinage. The Romans would thus be likely to adopt as the denarius the Karsha and its division (135, 67\5, and 33’75 O.G.T.) from the Etruscans (see “ Origin of Currency,” Ridgway, p. 363) ; or else the Euboie sextarial drachma of 90, 45, and 22-5 O.G.T. from Sicily. Humphreys (“Ancient Coins,” 1850, p. 191) says: “ This silver coin [the denarius], originating in the Republic at the weight of 90 grains, being in the reign of Augustus 60, and in mid-empire 58, was eventually reduced to 10 : shortly before that it became the parent of the Anglo-Saxon silver penny.” The Roman aureus, double of the denarius, probably com- menced at a weight of 135 O.G.T. ; in the time of C. Caesar Cos III. (about 63 b.c.), it weighed 124 G.T. (see Greaves’s “ Denarius,” p. 104). I suggest, then, that originally the silver denarius weighed 90 O.G.T., after the Euboie sextarial drachma, but that sub- sequently it was reduced to 67‘5 O.G.T., or half a Karsha, following the silver coinage of the Etruscans, about 269 b.c.