But to return. We have seen that with the imprinting of some device on the primitive bars of copper, the tendency to reduce their weight would quickly evince itself. Accordingly it was possible that in certain places when the coinage of silver began, and there was still a desire to make the silver unit equal to the copper, the latter having been already reduced, the silver would be proportioned thereto. Thus when silver was first coined in some towns in Sicily, the silver Aeginetic obol of 16½ grs. was regarded as the equivalent of the copper litra, but when Syracuse started a coinage of Corinthian staters, a piece of silver of 13½ grs. was accounted as the litra. But in other parts of Italy the process was somewhat different. For we find the silver unit when once fixed remaining the same in weight, but simply having its denomination altered to meet the requirements of certain changes in the bronze series. Thus the Etruscan silver staters of the period prior to 350 B.C., which weigh 130 grs., are marked 𐌢, whilst the coins of the same weight at a later epoch are marked 𐌢𐌢, showing that the copper unit had undergone a change. This Soutzo thinks was simply a reduction from the triental to the sextantal foot, and in no wise due to any change in the relative value of silver and copper. That however both influences may have aided in the change will be made clear from the history of the reduction of the Roman _denarius_ and _as_ in the second Punic war. Finally when the Romans coined their first _denarii_ in 268 B.C., the _libella_ or tenth of the _denarius_, which represented in silver the copper _libra_, was only 7 grs., an indubitable proof that the _as_ was but then a mere fraction of its former self. Yet all the same it is clear that this silver _denarius_, which represented a reduced _decussis_ of bronze, had its ultimate source in nothing else than the 10 libral _asses_ which represented the value of a sheep. Are we not then justified in suggesting that the Etruscan stater of 135 grs. marked 𐌢 had a like origin, that the 10 litra piece or _noummos_ of Tarentum of almost the same weight, and the Syracusan 10 litra piece of 135 grs., had also a similar origin, whilst at an earlier period 10 Aeginetic obols (the _nomi_ of the poems of Epicharmus and Sophron) were the equivalent of the same animal? Ten _nomi_ were the price of a calf in the time of Epicharmus, and as we have seen already the value of a sheep and a young calf is always about the same, even down to the present day. _Roman System._ Although it is not our concern to go into the history of Roman money, it is nevertheless necessary to give the reader a short sketch of its principal features in order to make the history of the Roman weight standards intelligible.