THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

ROME
The first essays in the direction of striking gold and
higher values in silver seem to have been equally due
to the exigencies of war, and to have been temporary
experiments independent of the normal coinage. We
allude, of course, to the scripulum of 20 sesterces and
its multiples of 40 and 60 in the most precious metal,
with the head of Mars struck during the campaign
with Hannibal, at Capua or elsewhere, in or about b.c.
206, and to the tridrachm in silver, and the pieces of
52 and 105 sesterces in gold, which form the earliest
convention-money of Rome, and refer to the treaty
between the republic and Capua for the subjugation of
Southern Italy ; the reverses of the latter coins exhibit
two parties swearing an oath over a sow, an Italian
usage of the highest antiquity. A similar type belongs
to the denarii and other money issued in Italy in the
name of the Anti-Roman League during the Social War
in b.c. 91, where eight warriors are represented per-
forming the same rite ; and Livy furnishes the alleged
text of the adjuration.
A very copious account of the Roman family series is
to be found in Humphreys, Akerman, and Stevenson.
The portraiture has a twofold interest in supplying us
not only with contemporary, but with posthumous like-
nesses of illustrious Romans. We obtain through this
medium the best busts of such men as Caesar, the
Pompeys, and Mark Antony, and the earliest one of
Augustus ; and down to the last days of the republic
the Janiform head was occasionally employed. Where
mythological subjects occur, as they so often do, we
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