The Historians' History of the World 05

Up to the time when Italy was conquered, the Romans had used only copper money of a most clumsy and inconvenient kind. A pound of this metal by weight was stamped with the rude effigy of a ship’s prow, and this was the original as or libra. Gradually the as was reduced in weight till, in the necessities of the Second Punic War, it became only one-sixth of the libra by weight; yet it retained its ancient name, just as the pound sterling of silver, originally equivalent to a pound Troy-weight, is now not more than one-third, or as the French livre is a much smaller fraction of that weight.[72] But even this diminished coin was clumsy for use, as trade increased with increasing empire. After the conquest of southern Italy the precious metals became more plentiful, and the coinage of the conquered cities supplied beautiful models. The first denarius, or silver piece of ten asses, was struck in the year 269 B.C., and is evidently imitated from the coins of Magna Græcia. The Roman generals who commanded in these districts stamped money for the use of their armies with the old insignia of the conquered cities. The workmanship is, indeed, inferior to the best specimens of Hellenic coins, but far superior to anything Roman, before or after. Gold coins of similar model were not struck till near the close of the Hannibalic War (205 B.C.). The great mass of Roman coins which we possess belongs to the last century of the republic. They usually bear the family emblems of the person who presided over the mint, or of the consuls for whose use they were struck; but the execution always remained rude and unattractive.

A Roman Orator

(After Hope)

Afterwards, Roman conquest gave the means of supplying works of art by the easier mode of appropriation. In the conquest of Etruria, years before, the practice had been begun; from Volsinii alone we read that two thousand statues were brought to Rome. In following years Agrigentum, Syracuse, Corinth, and other famous cities, sent the finest works of Hellenic art to decorate the public buildings and public places of the barbarous city of the Tiber, or in many cases to ornament the villas of the rapacious generals.

In the more intellectual even of the useful arts the Romans made no great progress. The contrivances of Archimedes for the defence of Syracuse struck them with amazement. In Cicero’s time they usually carried the sciences of quantity and magnitude no further than was necessary for practical arithmetic and mensuration. In 293 B.C. L. Papirius Cursor the younger set up a sun-dial at Rome, and thirty years later another was brought from Sicily by the consul M. Valerius Messalla; but no one knew how to place them, so as to make the shadow of the gnomon an index of time. A water-clock, resembling our sand-glass, was not introduced till 159 B.C.

Nor were the common conveniences of life in an advanced state. Up to the year 264 the houses were commonly roofed with shingles of wood, like the Alpine cottages of our days; then first earthen tiles began to supersede this rude material. Agriculture must have been roughly carried on by men who were as much soldiers as countrymen. The wine of Latium was so bad that Cineas, when he tasted it, said—and the witticism was remembered—“he did not wonder that the mother of such wine was hung so high”; alluding to the Italian custom, still retained, of training the vine up elms and poplars, while in Greece it was trained (as in France and Germany) on short poles and exposed to all the heat of the sun.