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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;EWC3, post: 3790922, member: 93416&quot;]I would much welcome comment from others, but as I understand it the (Nero+) denarius disappeared as a coin in the 3rd century, and by the early fourth century it was already turning into a “book value” at 1/100th of its original intrinsic value, used in calculation - and it went into even steeper decline (as a book value) later in the century as inflation ramped up.</p><p><br /></p><p>The coins that survived the empire were really the gold solidus and its fraction, often themselves in debased form in the West.</p><p><br /></p><p>A correct understanding however of the <b>weight</b> of the (Nero+) denarius as part of Roman <b>weight system</b> did survive the end of empire, in the works of Favius and Isidore and others. Medieval Rome itself apparently correctly understood this denarius weight, but got the story wrong on the libra, making it 100 denarii thus c. 340g.</p><p><br /></p><p>Charlemagne seems to have better sources than Rome, Favius and Isidore. His reformed penny of c. 794 weighed c. 1.7g thus was deliberately and exactly fixed at ½ the (Nero+) denarius. I follow Grierson in believing he had a bullion pound that was exactly an attic mina of c. 437g. That was made into (a binary) 256 pennies, which would weigh the same as 128 denarii. Since the Roman libra was apparently 12/16 times the Attic mina, this gives 96 denarii to the libra, which was surely correct.</p><p><br /></p><p>This would imply Charlemagne had better sources than the Latin writers Favius and Isidore. My guess is he got his correct understanding from Haroon al Rashid.</p><p><br /></p><p>Getting (at last!) to the names. I think the names denier, denaro etc did not come directly from the Roman coins. They came largely from attempts to explain the Bible to lay people around the 8th or 9th century AD. As such they made more sense in Carolingian lands (where the penny was a kind of half denarius).</p><p><br /></p><p>The “d” sign in England makes less sense - as the sterling penny seems to have very little to do with the denarius. I suspect that came about almost exclusively in connection with early medieval decisions taken in Biblical translation.</p><p><br /></p><p>Thoughts anyone?</p><p><br /></p><p>Rob T[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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