THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

V
ROME
When we enter upon the consideration of the Roman
coinage, we of course find ourselves occupying very
interesting ground, yet we cannot fail to be aware of
the change which has occurred in the atmosphere sur-
rounding the new branch of our inquiry. The Romans,
as the next and yet more westerly centre of civilisation
and power, had owed much to their precursors before
they acquired the opportunity of politically supplant-
ing them ; the brass «v, in its primitive amplitude,
was characteristic of rude Pelasgian grandeur, for this
heavy currency or medium, which supplied a prototype
of the phenomenal Swedish dalers of the eighteenth
century, was common to the cities of Southern Italy?
which the new empire necessarily absorbed, and was in
fact adopted, rather than initiated, by Rome. AYe
have already seen that in Lydia the archaic money was
of gold, for the apparent reason that that region pos-
sessed mines of that ore ; and in the same way in Italy,
copper being abundant, and the primitive inhabitants
having been instructed in the art of smelting it and
hardening it by an alloy of tin, we find what was
termed ws, or bronze, in use throughout the southern
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