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Roman currency names survive today in many countries via the Carolingian monetary system, such as the dinar (from the denarius coin), the British pound (a translation of the Roman libra, a unit of weight), the peso (also a translation of libra), and the words for the general concept of money in the Iberian Romance languages (e.g. Spanish dinero ...
During the Roman Republic it was a small, silver coin issued only on rare occasions. During the Roman Empire it was a large brass coin. The name sestertius means "two and one half", referring to its nominal value of two and a half asses (a bronze Roman coin, singular as), a value that was useful for commerce because it was one quarter of a ...
A spintria (plural, spintriae) is a small bronze or brass Roman token that typically has a sexual image on one side, and a numeral ranging from I to XVI on the other. [2] They are a little smaller than a 50 euro cent coin (about 24 mm in diameter ).
The basic copper coin, the as, was to weigh 1 Roman pound. This was a large cast coin, and subdivisions of the as were used. The "pound" (libra, etc.) continued to be used as a currency unit, and survives e.g. in the British monetary system, which still uses the pound, abbreviated as £. 211 BC: Introduction: 4.55 g: 95–98%: 1 ⁄ 72 pound.
The initial coins featured the bust of Roma on the obverse and a six-spoked wheel on the reverse. A loaf of bread or a sextarius ( c. 0.5 L) of wine cost roughly one dupondius at the height of the Roman Empire, though due to the debasement of the denarius over the following century, the dupondius was discarded.
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An ancient Roman document called the Historia Augusta (of generally low reliability) refers to silver coins named after an Antoninus on several occasions (several Roman emperors in the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries bore this name). Because Caracalla's silver coin was a new issue, and he had taken Antoninus as part of his imperial name, an ...
Roman imperial coin, struck c. 241, with the head of Tranquillina on the obverse, or front of the coin, and her marriage to Gordian III depicted on the reverse, or back side of the coin, in smaller scale; the coin exhibits the obverse – "head", or front – and reverse – "tail", or back – convention that still dominates much coinage today.