f you can recall any school-taught languages you may remember that is the Latin word for money. It derives from the word for sheep (pecus) because the animals were counted as wealth during Rome’s early years. So also was the alloy bronze, its main constituents being copper and lead, which the Romans cast into thick sheets, then hacked into irregular shapes and used as bullion with a set of scales when buying and selling. The chunks of alloy were called aes rude, meaning rough bronze. In the late fourth century BC those rough chunks evolved to cast bars of bronze with a design of some form cut in the mould. These bars came to meaning signed bronze. Around 300 BC the city of Rome began to mark the signed bronze castings from its furnaces with the inscription ‘ROMANORUM’ meaning ‘OF THE ROMANS’.
