In my adventures with finding a good font for medieval texts (MUFI to the rescue, with directions to unicode if anyone is interested...) I stumbled on to the addition of Roman symbols for coins that have been included. I have no idea if these were actually used, or of how much use they would be for people here, but I thought I would share just in case. Here they are, to test if they work in Cointalk: 10190, Sextans: 10191, Uncia: 10192, Semiuncia: 10193, Sextula: 10194, Dimidia Sextula: 10195, Siliqua: 10196, Denarius: 10197, Quinarius: 10198, Sestertius: 10199, Dupondius: 1019A, As: I'll add that as I have typed these, they appear on my screen. I do not know how this appears to others if it is in fact a part of all unicode or just the unicode font. Now, just what do the symbols mean? I could hazard a guess, but this is certainly not my area. It seems quite obvious that Denarius is the symbols for ten (X) with a line through, and Quinarius the same for five (V). As I pull out my copy of Sayles' Ancient Coin Collecting III, these symbols seemed to be based off of the As for the Republic after 211 B.C., and are shown on many of the coins illustrated. So this calls for another chart... Semiuncia: (1/24, I have no clue why this symbol) Uncia: (1/12, no clue why it is a horizontal line) Sextans: (1/6, or twice the Uncia, and hence twice the lines?) As: (1, or I) Dupondius: (2, or II) Sestertius: (2.5, II and a 'semi') Quinarius: (5, or V) Denarius: (10, or X) Siliqua: (no clue... but this reminds be of the 'thousands' symbol. To my knowledge, Siliqua were issued much later) Sextula: (? In latin it is "lesser," but lesser than what? An As?) Dimidia Sextula: (? I would image half a sextula) Anyway, forgive my ramblings. If anyone have any coins with these symbols on them, please post away! or, enlighten me if you have more information behind the symbols.
Well, the symbols dont appear on my ipad nor on my computer once I posted the above, but here is a screen shot from the MUFI “manual” So this may be useful for personal files, but I guess not for the forum
I believe the software on this site does not allow the more obscure Unicode symbols to be used in messages. When I have tried to post them they have been stripped. The pound sign (£) derives from a capital "L", representing libra, the basic unit of weight in the Roman Empire, which in turn is derived from the Latin word, libra, meaning scales or a balance. The Roman weight became defined as the English pound (equivalent to 350 grams) of fine (pure) silver. The horizontal line means "abbreviation" and has been used since the 1600s. The symbol ₤ (note the double dash at its middle) was called the lira sign in Italy, before the adoption of the euro.
Following are some ASCII Extended Character Set Entities (not on many keyboards) that may be of some use on this Forum. They can be applied to postings here via copying and pasting the entity symbols. € ---------- Euro monetary symbol £ ---------- British monetary pound ¥ --------- Japanese Yen ¢ ---------- US cent © ---------- Copyright ® ---------- Registered ± ----------- high/low range ¼ ---------- fractional quarter ½ ---------- fractional half ¾ ---------- fractional three quarters ° ----------- degree
