Pliny: Natural History, Vol. IX (Loeb)

interest as ‘weighed on account’ and paying as ‘weighing down,’ and moreover it explains the terms ‘soldiers’ stipend,’ which means ‘weights of heaped money,’ and the words for accountants and paymasters that mean ‘weighers’ and ‘pound-weighers,’ and owing to this custom in purchases that deal with all larger personal property, even at the present day, an actual pair of ‘pound’-scales is introduced. Traditional dates 578–534 B.C. King Servius was the first to stamp a design on bronze; previously, according to Timaeus, at Rome they used raw metal. The design stamped on the metal was an ox or a sheep, pecus cattle/livestock, which is the origin of the term ‘pecunia’ money. The highest assessment of one man’s property in the reign of Servius was 120,000 as-pieces, and consequently that amount of property was the standard of the first class of citizens.

269–8 B.C. Silver was first coined in the 485th year of the city, in the consulship of Quintus Ogulnius and Gaius Fabius, five years before the first Punic War. It was decided that the value of a denarius should be ten pounds of bronze, that of a half-denarius five pounds, that of a sesterce a Roman coin worth 2.5 asses two pounds and a half. The weight of a standard pound of bronze was however reduced during the first Punic War, when the state could not meet its expenditure, and it was enacted that the as should be struck weighing two ounces. This effected a saving of five sixths, and the national debt was liquidated. The design of this bronze coin was on one side a Janus facing both ways and on the other the ram of a battleship; the third of an as and the quarter as had a ship. The latter had previously been called a teruncius three-ounce weight, as weighing three ounces. Subsequently when the presence of Hannibal was being felt, in the dictator- 217 B.C.