CHAPTER XII. The Greek System.

mark, weighing from an ounce to a pound, and (3) some ellipse-shaped pieces for the most part weighing two ounces⁶². But in the British Museum are preserved a number of pieces of bronze which are roughly quadrilateral. A cursory examination showed me that, whilst two parallel sides exhibit the marks of a mould, the two remaining sides displayed unmistakable signs of fracture. Several of them are end pieces, showing the voluting of the mould on two sides and at one end, whilst the other end shows marks of having been broken (Fig. 48). Several of them bear stamps, or letters. There can be no doubt that these are pieces of short bars of bronze, which were afterwards cut up, as occasion demanded. The imprints on them prove them to be of comparatively recent date. If therefore the asses still retained their bar shape after the art of stamping metal to serve as currency had come into use, à fortiori the primitive as of Italy must certainly have been nothing more than a plain rod or bar of copper, which passed from hand to hand as the obols in Greece, and the bars of iron and copper pass at the present among savages of Africa and Asia⁶³. This was what was called by the ancient writers the raw copper (aes rude), as distinguished from the stamped copper (aes signatum) of a later date. The fact that early specimens of aes signatum, such as the decussis, bearing a cow on both obverse and reverse (Fig. 49), were still made in the shape of a bar, is a further proof that such was the original form.