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Starting with Nero in 64 AD, the Romans continuously debased their silver coins until, by the end of the 3rd century AD, hardly any silver was left.. A predecessor of the denarius was first struck in 269 or 268 BC, five years before the First Punic War, [3] with an average weight of 6.81 grams, or 1 ⁄ 48 of a Roman pound.
Roman currency for most of Roman history consisted of gold, silver, bronze, orichalcum and copper coinage. [1] From its introduction during the Republic, in the third century BC, through Imperial times, Roman currency saw many changes in form, denomination, and composition. A feature was the inflationary debasement and replacement of coins over ...
When the solidus was reintroduced by Constantine I (r. 306–337) in 312 AD, permanently replacing the aureus as the gold coin of the Roman Empire, it was struck at a rate of 72 to a Roman pound of pure gold, each coin weighing twenty-four Greco-Roman carats, or about 4.5 grams of gold per coin.
Gold coins typically represented larger nominal sums, but they also introduced a bimetallic system of currency which depended on the values of two precious metals. The French "franc", introduced in 1360, was the first coin anywhere to represent exactly 1 pfund or "pound". The gold "sovereign", first minted in 1489, was the first English £1 coin.
Roman mints were spread widely across the Empire, and were sometimes used for propaganda purposes. The populace often learned of a new Roman Emperor when coins appeared with the new emperor's portrait. [citation needed] Roman currency for most of Roman history consisted of gold, silver, bronze, orichalcum and copper coinage. [73]
In Western Europe, the solidus was the main gold coin of commerce from late Roman times to Pepin the Short's currency reform in the 750s, which introduced the silver-based pound-shilling-penny system. In Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the solidus also functioned as a unit of weight equal to 1 ⁄ 72 Roman pound (approximately 4.5 grams).
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It was divided into 12 Roman ounces. Sometimes the word libra was used together with the word pondo "in weight", e.g. libram pondo "a pound in weight" (Livy, 3.29); but often pondo was used alone; e.g. auri quinque pondo "five (pounds) in weight of gold" (Cicero, pro Cluentio 179). Hence the word pondo by itself came to mean "pound(s)". [25]