It was much the same with the other arts. Take the coins, for example. The clumsy copper _As_, with the head of Janus on the obverse and the prow of a ship on the reverse,[32] had of old weighed 12 ounces. All through republican history it was gradually shrinking; in 217 B.C. it was fixed at one ounce, in 89 B.C. at half an ounce. Long before that, however, silver had taken its place. As we have remarked, silver was not coined, though no doubt it circulated, at Rome before 268 B.C.. From 217 onwards silver became the real standard of value, and about 80 B.C. the copper coinage ceased altogether for a time. Not only were the original designs of the “heavy copper” borrowed from Greece, but there is not the least sign in the Roman coinage of any artistic development as time progresses. Simply, as Head remarks, “the degree of excellence attained in any particular district depended upon the closeness of its relations, direct or indirect, with some Greek city, or at least with a population imbued with the spirit of Greek art.” There are coins of Sulla, both silver and gold, doubtless of Greek workmanship, which display fairly artistic designs.[33] But the coins of Antony and Cleopatra, interesting as they are historically, and designed, of course, in the Hellenised East, are much inferior.[33] We notice an attempt at portraiture, but the striking resemblance between the Roman triumvir and the Egyptian queen suggests the question which of the pair was the original. In sculpture, too, the most ardent supporters of Roman originality can find little to comfort them in the closing century of the Republic. We have seen how the victories of Mummius and his successors had created a taste and a market for Greek works of art. With those of Sulla and Lucullus immense quantities of loot had crossed the Adriatic, and Rome began to be what New York is now, the home of connoisseurs and collectors. As connoisseurs are wont to do, the Roman millionaires studied commercial values rather than artistic qualities. No doubt in time their taste improved from the days when Mummius had warned his men that any of the Greek masterpieces destroyed in transit would have to be replaced by new ones. But they still went very largely by the names of the artists: a genuine Praxiteles or Scopas was worth immense sums. Every villa now required statues for its adornment--Greek originals, if possible; if not, copies. For the most part they were reckoned purely as objects of value along with handsome tables, vases, bowls, and signet-rings. When Cicero buys Greek statues he prefers Muses to Bacchantes as being more appropriate to his studies. The question of artistic value scarcely enters his mind. The most famous named sculptor of this period is the Italian-Greek Pasiteles, who visited Rome about 90 B.C. and there made original statues for Roman temples. Pasiteles, of course, was of the Hellenic decline. He was a metal-worker by