9th April. Corre and copper mixed with tin, the ancient brass, were made into the as by the Romans from the time of Numa Pompilius, the reputed founder of the Roman mint. His age is supposed to have been about B.C. 700, and he brought with him to Rome many features of a foreign civilisation. He was a Sabine and his tribe occupied the Apennines to the north of Rome and to the east of ''tuscany. He brought a calendar to Rome. The system of augury by the flight of birds and a college of pontiffs to regulate religion are traced to him. Evidently it was an importation of Asiatic usages that Numa brought with him. All these things belong to Asia, The system of lucky and unlucky-days, for example, is found all over Asia. It means an overruling destiny and is the outcome of that belief in divine providence which is natural to man in all countries and ages. Probably then the coining of brass and copper money came to Rome through Phoenician and Greek navigation in the Adriatic and Mediterranean seas, and it appears to have existed in Rome and other Italian cities as early as seven centuries before Christ. From what Pliny says, the Romans coined brass for a very long time before they coined silver. Indeed it was only after the Romans became republicans that they began to coin silver. The reason of their wishing a silver coinage was that they were grown richer by trade, there was a constantly increasing amount of silver and copper, and these metals became cheaper for that reason. At first the as wasa pound. The word as means one. It is the Greek eis pronounced in southern Italy by the people of Tarentum fas, one. Ihe word as means a unit in land measure, and in long measure, as well as in Troy weight. Of this there is conclusive evidence in Latin writers. As a weight then the as must have been of Greek origin among the Romans. It was divided in twelve, Our common division of twelve ounces into one pound is of as great an antiquiry as the Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily. These colonies were principally founded in the eighth century before Christ. 'l'arentum was built by a Lace-demonian colony in B.C, 708. Since the very word as is Done, the weights and measures of the Romans introduced about that time were the result of Greek commercial activity. 'I'hey received their ideas from Assyrians, Egyptians, and Phonicians. The use of copper was preferred, because it was a common metal used in weighing and easily obtained. The weight of one pound was that of the balance. In the bronze age weighing came into use, The weight was a lump of copper or bronze. It was the unit and it was Babylonian usage that fixed what a pound should be; the Greek dita a pound weight agrees with didra in meaning. he Greek word for the weight of a balance was stathmos, In the time of Assyrian and Babylonian kings, the government fixed the weights and measures, and we know from mina, the word for a pound weight, and which the Romans borrowed from the Greeks, that knowledge of this sort came to the Greeks from Asia. Weighing began with the level invented by the Babylonians, the first builders on scientific principles. It was they that made the balances with which to this day we weigh all the articles in our markets. 'I'his took place before the iron age, It was in the bronze age that copper and bronze became the most convenient weight to be used on a steelyard. 'I'bis gave copper the precedence as the metal of early coins in Western countries and in China, The word mina, or mna as it was pronounced in Athens, is really the Asiatic root manak, to divide, count, and when it is the name of a weight it is the unit of division. Our word " money " comes from the Latin moncta, and monera is derived through the Greek from this Asiatic word used in counting and as a unit of division, Then we ask what is money in Chinese? A Canton shroff calls a copper cash mun, it is the same word as money. When the Chinese call a cash a wen (Mandarin), a ven (Shanghai), a bun (Amoy), they are in fact using our Western word "money" which was lengthened into the Latin monera and then shortened by the French who dropped the letter ¢ In this form it, came to us.
In the Kwo Yii, a work of the Confacian age, we are told that copper cash were made by the Chow Emperor, Ching Wang. They were large coins and the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.