on the stage speaking Phoenician, and
the dialogue swarms with Greek and half Greek words and phrases.
But the extent and zealous prosecution of Roman business-dealings may
be traced most distinctly by means of coins and monetary relations.
The Roman denarius quite kept pace with the Roman legions. We have
already mentioned(19) that the Sicilian mints--last of all that of
Syracuse in 542--were closed or at any rate restricted to small money
in consequence of the Roman conquest, and that in Sicily and Sardinia
the -denarius- obtained legal circulation at least side by side with
the older silver currency and probably very soon became the exclusive
legal tender. With equal if not greater rapidity the Roman silver
coinage penetrated into Spain, where the great silver-mines existed
and there was virtually no earlier national coinage; at a very
early period the Spanish towns even began to coin after the Roman
standard.(20) On the whole, as Carthage coined only to a very limited
extent,(21) there existed not a single important mint in addition to
that of Rome in the region of the western Mediterranean, with the
exception of that of Massilia and perhaps also those of the Illyrian
Greeks in Apollonia and Dyrrhachium. Accordingly, when the Romans
began to establish themselves in the region of the Po, these mints
were about 525 subjected to the Roman standard in such a way, that,
while they retained the right of coining silver, they uniformly
--and the Massiliots in particular--were led to adjust their
--drachma-- to the weight of the Roman three-quarter -denarius-, which
the Roman government on its part began to coin, primarily for the use
of Upper Italy, under the name of the "coin of victory" (-victoriatus-
). This new system, dependent on the Roman, not merely prevailed
throughout the Massiliot, Upper Italian, and Illyrian territories; but
these coins even penetrated into the barbarian lands on the north,
those of Massilia, for instance, into the Alpine districts along the
whole basin of the Rhone, and those of Illyria as far as the modern
Transylvania. The eastern half of the Mediterranean was not yet
reached by the Roman money, as it had not yet fallen under the direct
sovereignty of Rome; but its place was filled by gold, the true and
natural medium for international and transmarine commerce. It is
true that the Roman government, in conformity with its strictly
conservative character, adhered--with the exception of a