At the present day, too, a fashion has been introduced among the men even, of wearing effigies upon their fingers representing Harpocrates[790] and other divinities of Egypt. In the reign of Claudius, also, there was introduced another unusual distinction, in the case of those to whom was granted the right of free admission,[791] that, namely, of wearing the likeness of the emperor engraved in gold upon a ring: a circumstance that gave rise to vast numbers of informations, until the timely elevation of the Emperor Vespasianus rendered them impossible, by proclaiming that the right of admission to the emperor belonged equally to all. Let these particulars suffice on the subject of golden rings and the use of them. CHAP. 13.—COINS OF GOLD. AT WHAT PERIODS COPPER, GOLD, AND SILVER WERE FIRST IMPRESSED. HOW COPPER WAS USED BEFORE GOLD AND SILVER WERE COINED. WHAT WAS THE LARGEST SUM OF MONEY POSSESSED BY ANY ONE AT THE TIME OF OUR FIRST CENSUS. HOW OFTEN, AND AT WHAT PERIODS, THE VALUE OF COPPER AND OF COINED MONEY HAS BEEN CHANGED. The next[792] crime committed against the welfare of mankind was on the part of him who was the first to coin a denarius[793] of gold, a crime the author of which is equally unknown. The Roman people made no use of impressed silver even before the period of the defeat[794] of King Pyrrhus. The “as” of copper weighed exactly one libra; and hence it is that we still use the terms “libella”[795] and “dupondius.”[796] Hence it is, too, that fines and penalties are inflicted under the name of “æs grave,”[797] and that the words still used in keeping accounts are “expensa,”[798] “impendia,”[799] and “dependere.”[800] Hence, too, the word “stipendium,” meaning the pay of the soldiers, which is nothing more than “stipis pondera;[801] and from the same source those other words, “dispensatores”[802] and “libripendes.”[803] It is also from this circumstance that in sales of slaves, at the present day even, the formality of using the balance is introduced. King Servius was the first to make an impress upon copper. Before his time, according to Timæus, at Rome the raw metal only was used. The form of a sheep was the first figure impressed upon money, and to this fact it owes its name, “pecunia.”[804] The highest figure at which one man’s property was assessed in the reign of that king was one hundred and twenty thousand asses, and consequently that amount of property was considered the standard of the first class.