Delineation of Numismatic Science

Ovid testifies to the same in his Fasti, Book I, v. 221:

They once gave bronze; now a better omen is in gold:
And the ancient currency has yielded, overcome by the new.

Hence also the rewards and penalties of "heavy bronze" æs grave heavy bronze (early Roman coinage) arose in the penal laws of Rome. See LIVY, History, Book IV, Chapters XLI and XLV. PLINY, loc. cit. To this also pertains what AURELIUS AUGUSTINE relates about the Gods of the Romans in The City of God, Book IV, Chapter XXI (Works, ed. Antwerp 1700, folio, Vol. VII, page 80): For they made Argentinus the father of Aesculanus (a God), because bronze money began to be used first, and silver money afterwards.

SERVIUS TULLIUS, the king, was the first among the Romans to stamp bronze, and at first indeed a rough mass marked with the sign of cattle original: "massa rudi signata nota pecudum", whence money (pecunia) is named from cattle (pecus): coins in silver: that came from the Sicilians. See VARRO, On the Latin Language, Book IV, pp. 24, 41, and JOSEPH SCALIGER'S Conjectures on Varro's Book IV, p. 69. PLINY, Natural History, Book XVIII, Chapter III. PLUTARCH in Publicola, Vol. I of his Works. CASSIODORUS, Roman History, Book VII, Chapter XXXII. Sometimes on coins struck by posterity for memory and honor, on one side Janus with a double face appears, and on the other a raft or ship,