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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 ...
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 ...
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.
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.
In ancient Rome there were a variety of officials tasked with banking. These were the argentarii, mensarii, coactores, and nummulari.The argentarii were money changers.The role of the mensarii was to help people through economic hardships, the coactores were hired to collect money and give it to their employer, and the nummulari minted and tested currency.
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.
An etching of a Roman Republican as. After the as had been issued as a cast coin for about seventy years, and its weight had been reduced in several stages, a sextantal as was introduced (meaning that it weighed one-sixth of a pound). At about the same time a silver coin, the denarius, was also introduced. Earlier Roman silver coins had been ...
40 ("M" is "40" in Greek) and 5 ("Є" is "5" in Greek) nummi of Anastasius. A Byzantine follis of Constantine VII and Zoe. 914-919AD. 26 mm.. The term "follis" is used for the large bronze coin denomination (40 nummi) introduced in 498, with the coinage reform of Anastasius, which included a series of bronze denominations with their values marked in Greek numerals.