06-19-2007, 05:17 PM
This is actually a slightly tricky issue, as it is likely that Romans didn't use coinage (either their own or anyone else's) until the 4th century BC... almost 200 years after the traditional reign of Servius Tullius. I think some people (Michael Crawford, in his Roman Republican Coinage, comes to mind) suggest that the early as was a pound of bronze, and explain the Servian classification system that way. But I've also read some arguments suggesting that the bulk of the system (or at least the system which Livy describes) is likely to be a 4th century BC invention.
