As so much difficulty and controversy surround the various questions connected with the beginnings of Roman currency, I have thought it best to give at full length the scanty data afforded by the ancient authorities. Let us now state the principal facts revealed by those extracts. (1) The Romans in the Regal epoch employed _aes rude_, but according to the testimony of Timaeus (an Italian Greek historian who wrote about B.C. 300), they had already before the days of the Republic stamped bronze with figures of cattle. (2) Silver was first coined five years before the beginning of the First Punic war: (3) Some time during that war the _as_ was reduced from a pound to two ounces; (4) In the Second Punic war under like circumstances the _as_ was reduced from two ounces to one ounce; (5) The _denarius_ when first struck represented ten libral _asses_, or a _decussis_; (6) In the Second Punic war when the _as_ was reduced, the _denarius_ was ordered to pass for 16 instead of 10 _asses_; (7) In spite of this reduction, the _denarius_ continued to be regarded as containing only 10 _asses_ when employed in paying the soldiers. Considerable numbers of _asses_ and the parts of _asses_ have come down to us, many of them bearing marks of value as before described. There is undoubted evidence of a constant reduction of the _as_. The question arises, did the reduction take place _per saltum_ or by a gradual process? Mommsen thinks that the _as_ continued to be of libral weight until shortly before 264 B.C. and that it was then without any intermediate steps reduced to the triens (4 ounces). Mr Soutzo on the other hand maintains with vigour that from 338 B.C., the date at which he fixes the first coinage of _asses_ at Rome, to 264 B.C., the degradation was a gradual process, and he arraigns Mommsen on a charge of disregarding the ancient authorities, who state, as we have seen, that the change was from libral to sextantal _asses_. Mr Soutzo is thus compelled to state that all the _asses_ within that period (338-264 B.C.) although they have a range from almost full libral weight to only 3 ounces were treated as libral _asses_. Now this of course is a very reasonable hypothesis on the principle which I have adopted that bronze money was in fact merely token currency, used only for local circulation and not for extraneous trade. But Mr Soutzo is precluded from adopting such a position unless he gives up the basis of his whole work. He has laid down that the bronze money was not a mere conventional currency, but always was actual value for the amount which it represented. On this assumption he obtains his relation of 1:120 between copper and silver. Assuming that the sextantal reduction was contemporaneous with the issue of the first _denarius_ (which is in direct defiance of the historians), he found that the _denarius_ of 70 grs. = 2 ounces (840 grs.) of bronze; therefore silver was to bronze as 120:1. Again, when the financial crisis