Leaves of Grasswith Introduction by Ernest Rhys (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3ROMAN. REMARKS ON THE COINS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. The coins, of which these are specimens, were the current money of ancient Romean empire founded (by the usual reckoning) seven hundred and fifty-three years before Christ, and finally extinguished A.D. 1453. According to their respective places in this vast tract of time, they exemplify the rudeness and poverty of a petty colony, the grandeur of an immense dominion, and the decay and barbarism of its feeble remnants. When we come to display these relics in their historical order, only one considerable difficulty is presented. We know indeed that the rough pieces of base metal were the earliest currency of Rome, sufficient for a poor and warlike horde. The pieces of silver, bearing only the insignia and name of growing Roma, must also be referred to an early period. But after that, and until the change from a republic to a despotism, the regulations of the coinage were such as to make it impossible now to arrange the coins in chronological order. The operations of the mint were under the control of the senate, and by that body intrusted to an official board, who seem to have had the power to enstamp such devices as they chose, but not to place the head or effigy of any individual on the coin, as was then the practice in neighboring monarchies. This distinction, it may be observed, has prevailed down to this day; and it is to the precedent set by the republics of Greece and Rome, as well as to an obvious propriety, that we owe the rule which excludes from our coins the heads of the Presidents. But while this honor was denied, even to a consul or a conqueror, the senate permitted or overlooked the insertion in the legend of the textit{name of an officer of the mint, or of a consul, praetor, or provincial governor, for whose disbursements any specific ...