at Rome during the second Punic war in 206 B.C. Backwardness in the coinage of silver among certain peoples is probably to be accounted for in the same way. The employment of iron money at Sparta (and Byzantium) was probably due to the dearth of precious metals rather than to any ordinance of Lycurgus against the employment of the latter. If accordingly we find that Rome did not coin silver until 268 B.C. we are justified in concluding that it was from want of silver she had been so long in following the example of the Etruscans and the Greeks.
It is certainly most significant that within four years after the capture of Tarentum (272 B.C.) and the subjugation of all Southern Italy we find her issuing a well-matured silver currency. Doubtless by her conquests she obtained a vast supply of the precious metal, for we know from the records of Livy and Pliny that great masses of foreign coins and bullion flowed into the treasury after every fresh conquest. We may therefore reasonably assume that previous to 272 B.C. silver had been much dearer in relation to copper.
But to return. We have seen that with the imprinting of some device on the primitive bars of copper, the tendency to reduce their weight would quickly evince itself. Accordingly it was possible that in certain places when the coinage of silver began, and there was still a desire to make the silver unit equal to the copper, the latter having been already reduced, the silver would be proportioned thereto. Thus when silver was first coined in some towns in Sicily, the silver Aeginetic obol of 16-1/2 grs. was regarded as the equivalent of the copper litra, but when Syracuse started a coinage of Corinthian staters, a piece of silver of 13-1/2 grs. was accounted as the litra.
But in other parts of Italy the process was somewhat different. For we find the silver unit when once fixed remaining the same in weight, but simply having its denomination altered to meet the requirements of certain changes in the
- [Footnote: possible that Aristophanes alludes to the new bronze coinage issued the year
before the Frogs was acted (Hist. Num. 314). No such base gold coins of Athens are known, and as her gold coins are of excellent quality, it is better to refer them with Head to 394 B.C., the period of her restored prosperity, when Conon and Pharnabazus brought aid from the great king.]
