fashion it was probably discovered that the Aeginetic obol of the Greek colonists was about equal in weight to the line (_scriptulum_) which is one-twenty-fourth of the inch (_uncia_) of copper. Thus as there are 24 _nomi_ in the Sicilian talent, so there are 24 _scriptula_ in the Roman _uncia_. These considerations help to explain the relations which existed between the _nomos_ (Aeginetic obol), _sestertius_, and _scruple_. Mr Soutzo[435] gives a very different account of the _nomos_. Starting with the Egyptian hypothesis he makes all the Italian weight systems of foreign origin. He thus makes the Roman libra the ⅟₁₀₀ of a Roman _talent_, which he seems to identify with a light Asiatic talent[436]. Starting with the talent he supposes that on Italian soil it was divided into 100 _librae_ instead of 60 heavy or 120 light minae, as in the East. Each of these _librae_ or _pounds_ was divided into 12 _ounces_, and each _ounce_ into 24 fractions. He holds likewise that the Italians adopted from the East the use of bronze “comme matière première de leurs échanges,” at the same time as they obtained the first germs of civilization and their first weight standards. The _centumpondium_ or 100 weight therefore he takes as his prime unit. But besides the talent and the mina and the _centumpondium_ and _libra_ or _as_, according to Mr Soutzo, “all the Italian peoples availed themselves of an intermediate weight unit: this was the _nomos_ or _decussis_[437]. This unit was the _libral nomos_, the twelfth of the heavy talent, being worth ten _minae_ or _librae_, and the _libral decussis_, the _tenth_ of the _centumpondium_, weighing 10 _librae_.” The monetary _nomos_ and _decussis_, he thinks, played an important part in the history of Italian coinage. He admits however that no specimen of either _nomos_ or _decussis_ of libral standard is known, the heaviest being a _decussis_ of the Roman triental (one-third) standard, whilst the pieces from Venusia and Teanum Apulum marked N I and N II (_nomos_ and double _nomos_), representing 10 and 20 minas respectively, belong to a still much more reduced standard. The simple multiples of the _as_ (libra) and litra, such as the _tripondius_ and _dupondius_, were just as rarely cast in the libral epoch. The _mina_ or the _as_ with their fractions, on the contrary, were the kinds most employed: originally the series was ordinarily composed of the _as_ (marked I or sometimes ............), the _semis_ (S), the _triens_ (....), the _quadrans_ (...), the _sextans_ (..), the _uncia_ (.) and _semuncia_ (Σ). In some series the _as_ is rare and the _semis_ is wanting, but in addition to the other denominations here given the _quincunx_ (:·:) and the _dextans_ (S...., 1 _semis_ + 4 _unciae_) are found. The presence or absence of these pieces characterizes certain Italian and Sicilian monetary systems[438]. All the evidence virtually which can be produced by Soutzo