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Updated: June 28, 2025
The imports were wine, of all the three sorts already mentioned, brass, tin, lead, coral, topazes, cloth of different kinds, sashes, storax, sweet lotus, white glass, stibium, cinnabar, and a small quantity of perfumes: a considerable quantity of corn was also imported; the denarius, both gold and silver, exchanging with profit against the coin of the country, on account of its greater purity.
The rise of demagogism promoted these distributions, which kept prices down, so that the farmers received but a small reward for labors, which made, of course, the condition of laborers but little above that of brutes: when the people of the capital paid but sixpence sterling for a bushel and a half of wheat, or one hundred and eighty pounds of dried figs, or sixty pounds of oil, or seventy-two pounds of meat, or four and a half gallons of wine sold only for fivepence, or three-fifths of a denarius.
The Turk had often said that he would not give a branch of this tree for a hundred denarii. How many blows with a whip would he reckon to a denarius? When it was evening the butcher awoke. He fell to drinking again, and he drank so much that his wife and his slave had to prop him up on his way back to the house. As he passed by the bonamera tree, he perceived that a branch had been broken off.
Thus the Attic -drachma-, although sensibly heavier than the -denarius-, was yet reckoned equal to it; the -tetradrachmon- of Antioch, weighing on an average 15 grammes of silver, was made equal to 3 Roman -denarii-, which only weigh about 12 grammes; the -cistophorus- of Asia Minor was according to the value of silver above 3, according to the legal tariff =2 1/2 -denarii-; the Rhodian half -drachma- according to the value of silver=3/4, according to the legal tariff = 5/8 of a -denarius-, and so on.
We find here subsequently the arrangement that the -denarius- has everywhere legal currency and is the only medium of official reckoning, while the local coins have legal currency within their limited range but according to a tariff unfavourable for them as compared with the -denarius-. This was probably not introduced all at once, and in part perhaps may have preceded Caesar; but it was at any rate the essential complement of the Caesarian arrangement as to the imperial coinage, whose new gold piece found its immediate model in the almost equally heavy coin of Alexander and was doubtless calculated especially for circulation in the east.
We had, besides, Vinicius, and Silvius the father. We gamed at supper like old fellows, both yesterday and today. And as any one threw upon the tali aces or sixes, he put down for every talus a denarius; all which was gained by him who threw a Venus."
This essential diversity between the Occidental and Oriental systems of currency came to be of the greatest historical importance: the Romanizing of the subject lands found one of its mightiest levers in the adoption of Roman money, and it was not through mere accident that what we have designated at this epoch as the field of the -denarius- became afterwards the Latin, while the field of the -drachma- became afterwards the Greek, half of the empire.
We find here subsequently the arrangement that the -denarius- has everywhere legal currency and is the only medium of official reckoning, while the local coins have legal currency within their limited range but according to a tariff unfavourable for them as compared with the -denarius-. This was probably not introduced all at once, and in part perhaps may have preceded Caesar; but it was at any rate the essential complement of the Caesarian arrangement as to the imperial coinage, whose new gold piece found its immediate model in the almost equally heavy coin of Alexander and was doubtless calculated especially for circulation in the east.
He raised the waxen boards, glanced at the memoranda of wagers, and tossed them down. "Denarii, only denarii coin of cartmen and butchers!" he said, with a scornful laugh. "By the drunken Semele, to what is Rome coming, when a Caesar sits o' nights waiting a turn of fortune to bring him but a beggarly denarius!"
How many thousand clinkings of coin against coin in purse and pouch, how many hundred impacts of hands that long since are dust, have served to dim your once clear relief! Surely, Pallas, you have looked upon all this and much more. Shall I see aught with your eyes, lady of my Sergian denarius?
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