g the internal intercourse of the Italians with each other
our written authorities are silent; coins alone furnish some
information. We have already mentioned(28) that in Italy, with the
exception of the Greek cities and of the Etruscan Populonia, there was
no coinage during the first three centuries of Rome, and that cattle
in the first instance, and subsequently copper by weight, served as
the medium of exchange. Within the present epoch occurred the
transition on the part of the Italians from the system of barter to
that of money; and in their money they were naturally led at first to
Greek models. The circumstances of central Italy led however to the
adoption of copper instead of silver as the metal for their coinage,
and the unit of coinage was primarily based on the previous unit of
value, the copper pound; hence they cast their coins instead of
stamping them, for no die would have sufficed for pieces so large and
heavy. Yet there seems from the first to have been a fixed ratio for
the relative value of copper and silver (250:1), and with reference to
that ratio the copper coinage seems to have been issued; so that, for
example, in Rome the large copper piece, the -as-, was equal in value
to a scruple (1/288 of a pound) of silver. It is a circumstance
historically more remarkable, that coining in Italy most probably
originated in Rome, and in fact with the decemvirs, who found in the
Solonian legislation a pattern for the regulation of their coinage;
and that from Rome it spread over a number of Latin, Etruscan,
Umbrian, and east-Italian communities, --a clear proof of the superior
position which Rome from the beginning of the fourth century held in
Italy. As all these communities subsisted side by side in formal
independence, legally the monetary standard was entirely local, and
the territory of every city had its own monetary system. Nevertheless
the standards of copper coinage in central and northern Italy may be
comprehended in three groups, within which the coins in common
intercourse seem to have been treated as homogeneous. These groups
are, first, the coins of the cities of Etruria lying north of the
Ciminian Forest and those of Umbria; secondly, the coins of Rome and
Latium; and lastly, those of the eastern seaboard. We have already
observed that the Roman coins held a certain ratio to silver by
weight; on the other hand we find those of the east coast of Italy
placed in a definite proportional re