Delineation of Ancient and Modern Numismatics

Chapter III. The same is testified to by Ovid in his Fasti, Book I, lines 221-223:

They gave bronze of old; a better omen now exists in gold:
And the ancient currency has yielded, conquered by the new.

Hence also arose the rewards and penalties of "heavy bronze" (aes grave) in the penal laws of Rome. See Livy, Histories, Book IV, Chapters XLI and XLV; and Pliny, loc. cit. in the place cited. To this also pertains what Aurelius Augustine reports regarding the Gods of the Romans in The City of God, Book IV, Chapter XXI (Works, Antwerp edition 1700, folio, Volume VII, page 80). For they placed the father of money, Aesculanus (a God), there because bronze money first began to be in use, and afterwards silver.

§ VI.

Servius Tullius was the first King among the Romans to mark bronze, and at first, indeed, the rough mass was marked with the sign of cattle, whence money (pecunia) is named from the flock (pecus). In silver, coins were adopted from the Sicilians. See Varro, On the Latin Language, Book IV, pages 24, 41; and Joseph Scaliger's Conjectanea in Varronis, Book IV, page 69; Pliny, Natural History, Book XVIII, Chapter III; Plutarch in his Life of Publicola, Volume I of his Works; and Cassiodorus, Roman History, Book VII, Chapter XXXII. Sometimes on coins struck by later generations for memory and honor, on one side Janus with his double face appears,