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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DonnaML, post: 7757479, member: 110350&quot;]From the Google Books preview of Harl&#039;s book, here&#039;s a reference to the quadrigatus (a late version of the didrachm) as a heavy denarius: <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Coinage_in_the_Roman_Economy_300_B_C_to/5yPDL0EykeAC?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;bsq=%22heavy%20denarius%22" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Coinage_in_the_Roman_Economy_300_B_C_to/5yPDL0EykeAC?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;bsq=%22heavy%20denarius%22" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/books/edition/Coinage_in_the_Roman_Economy_300_B_C_to/5yPDL0EykeAC?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;bsq=&quot;heavy denarius&quot;</a></p><p><br /></p><p>I see that there was a thread about all this back in 2019, in which you cited Harl&#039;s view: <a href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/republican-denarius-value-over-time.343378/" class="internalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/republican-denarius-value-over-time.343378/">https://www.cointalk.com/threads/republican-denarius-value-over-time.343378/</a>.</p><p><br /></p><p>The issue I have -- and I am certainly no expert -- is that I&#039;m not sure that any other prominent scholars take the same view as Harl. He may stand alone at this point in claiming that the Romans used the term &quot;denarius&quot; (heavy or otherwise) for didrachms, prior to the introduction of what we think of as denarii ca. 211 BCE.</p><p><br /></p><p>I do not know what contemporaneous evidence (if any) Harl cites for his viewpoint -- there&#039;s none in the portions of his book available via Google Books -- but it does seem that in general, the contention is ultimately based on Livy&#039;s alleged statement that the term denarius was used for the didrachm/quadrigatus. Self-evidently, anything Livy said does not constitute contemporaneous evidence for terminology used before 211 BCE!</p><p><br /></p><p>Although Crawford&#039;s RRC obviously precedes Harl&#039;s book, it&#039;s certainly worth pointing out that Crawford firmly rejects the idea that the term denarius was used before 211 BCE.&nbsp; See, for example, Crawford Vol. I pp. 28-29 n. 4, noting &quot;the view that quadrigati were described by Livy as denarii,&quot; and stating that &quot;there is no evidence or probability that the word &#039;denarius&#039; existed before the creation of the silver piece with the mark of value X [in 211 BCE]. The ancient sources are clear that the coin was so named because <i>made up of </i>ten asses (see p. 3); the quadrigatus, like many of the silver coins of Magna Graecia, was <i>subdivided into</i> ten litrae (cf. p. 626); there is no real resemblance at all.&quot; (Emphases in original.)</p><p><br /></p><p>So, before accepting Harl&#039;s term as valid, I would definitely have to know if he cites any <u>contemporaneous</u> evidence for pre-211 usage of the term denarius (or for the theory that a didrachm/quadrigatus actually equalled ten asses rather than ten litrae), and if any other scholars agree with him.</p><p><br /></p><p>Absent such evidence, I would tend to agree with what [USER=103869]@Scipio[/USER] said above.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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