Re: Denarii (was: Celtic months)

["Raymond A. Brown" <raybrown@clara.co.uk>]

At 7:06 pm +1300 29/1/99, Andrew Smith wrote:
>In for a dinar, in for a lira; as my friend the philatelist would say.
>
>Point for people to consider is that I don't think that any British
>language kept denarii-solidii-librae as currency names beyond the
>productive borrowing of LSD as short hand.  It doesn't seem to have
>survived in the Celtic languages (this statement is subject to correction
>by people who know better than me), and the English preferred their own
>names.  I suspect after the departure of the Romans the currency quietly
>collapsed.

The denarii-solidi-librae currency was _not_ the Roman system so any
question of its 'survival' is spurious.  Indeed, the 'shilling' did not
make its appearance until 1504.  I guess it was Latinized as 'solidus'
because the word began with s-.  The actual Roman solidus was a gold coin
minted under the emperors which at first had the value of 25 denarii but
was later reduced to almost half this value.

The Romans did bequeath us a pound weight (libra) of twelve ounces and a
foot measure of twelve inches.  Both 'ounce' & 'inch' are derived from
Latin 'u:ncia' (1/12), the former via Old French & the latter via Old
English.  These measures have survived in these islands right up to the
present day, except that the 12-ounce 'Troy' pound is used only by
goldsmiths & silversmiths AFAIK, the later averdupois pound having 16
ounces.   I have no doubt these measures would have survived in Britain in
any credible alternative post-Roman Britain.

Money in the Roman world varied during its long history owing to frequent
periods of inflation.  The original monetary unit seems to have been the
'as', a copper weighing 1 pound (12 ounces), but with inflation, following
inflation, the 'as' became more and more devalued until was practically
worthless.  The denarius was in origin a silver coin worth 10 asses, later
as the as was devalued during the Punic wars it rose to 16 asses and later
to 18 asses.  Pliny tells us of a golden denarius which had the value of 25
silver denarii (presumably this was, in fact, the solidus).

The denarius, whatever its value, does seem to persisted right throught the
roman period and, as we have seen, way beyond it.  It seems to very unlikly
it would not have survived in post-Roman Britain.

In the Classical period, which I became very familar with at school, the
main monetary unit was the sesterce 'se:stertius' which means, in Latin, 2
and half.  It was originally a small silver coin worth 2.5 asses, i.e. a
quarter of a denarius.  As the as was developed, the sesterce continued to
be reckoned as a quarter of a denarius so it was in the Classical period
worth rather more the its literal 2.5 asses!  It was the normal coin of
reckoning used in the 1st cents. BC and AD and the Romans were happy
working in thousands of sestertii (just as their modern descendents like
working in thousands of lire).  I don't know how long the sesterce
continued but it doesn't seem to have been around at the end of the Empire
- I guess inflation had devalued it too much - so the denarius was left to
survive.

The familiar (to us here :) Brit system owes its origin to the Carolingians
on the continent!  I guess that with the break of the western Empire,
monetary systems became localized and confused.  The Carolingians set a
standard that the silver penny (denarius) should be 1/240 of a (Troy) pound
of silver.  This standard was adopted by the English, among others, hence
our pound & pennies.  (There were still 240 pennies to the pound right
throughtout my boyhood, teens & beyond :)

If the Carolingian dynasty still exist in Brithenig's alternate world & it
carries out similar reforms, would it not be likely that both the Saxons
and Chomro would have adopted the 240d to the pound of silver system?

Whether the Chomro would at some time have some intermediary coin - mark,
noble, angle, crown, shield (ecu, scudo) etc - is, of course, a matter of
speculation for us and discovery for Andrew :)

Ray.