peted in silver currency with the Roman,
that of Massilia. The coining of silver or copper small money
was still permitted to a number of Occidental communities;
three-quarter -denarii- were struck by some Latin communities
of southern Gaul, half -denarii- by several cantons in northern Gaul,
copper small coins in various instances even after Caesar's time
by communes of the west; but this small money was throughout coined
after the Roman standard, and its acceptance moreover was probably
obligatory only in local dealings. Caesar does not seem any more
than the earlier government to have contemplated the regulation
with a view to unity of the monetary system of the east,
where great masses of coarse silver money--much of which too easily
admitted of being debased or worn away--and to some extent even,
as in Egypt, a copper coinage akin to our paper money
were in circulation, and the Syrian commercial cities would have felt
very severely the want of their previous national coinage corresponding
to the Mesopotamian currency. We find here subsequently
the arrangement that the -denarius- has everywhere legal currency
and is the only medium of official reckoning,(115) while the local coins
have legal currency within their limited range but according
to a tariff unfavourable for them as compared with the -denarius-.(116)
This was probably not introduced all at once, and in part perhaps
may have preceded Caesar; but it was at any rate the essential
complement of the Caesarian arrangement as to the imperial coinage,
whose new gold piece found its immediate model in the almost equally
heavy coin of Alexander and was doubtless calculated especially
for circulation in the east.

Reform of the Calendar

Of a kindred nature was the reform of the calendar.
The republican calendar, which strangely enough was still
the old decemviral calendar--an imperfect adoption of the -octaeteris-
that preceded Meton (117)--had by a combination of wretched mathematics
and wretched administration come to anticipate the true time
by 67 whole days, so that e. g. the festival of Flora was celebrated
on the 11th July instead of the 28th April. Caesar finally removed
this evil, and with the help of the Greek mathematician Sosigenes
introduced the Italian farmer's year regulated according to the Egyptian
calendar of Eudoxus, as well as a rational system of intercalation,
into religious and official use; while at the same time
the beginning of the