Historical-Political Dissertation on Coins, Both Functional and Commemorative

see the erudite Dialogues of Antonio Agustín, formerly Archbishop of Tarragona, on the antiquity of ancient Coins, p. 2, regarding what they are, and whether they are to be counted among coins? especially to that line of Horace 234. L. 2. Epist. 1.

And who does not know that a coin most specially is called a Pfenning? see Küzel, formerly Vice-Chancellor of the Academy of Giessen, in his Book on the Law of Coinage, Class. 1. theory 4. p. 42, and the Authors cited by him.

§. III.

§. 3. Synonymy. Among the Synonyms of a coin, the most important is first moneta money, which some wish to be derived, and among them Isidore Book 15 c. 17, from monendo warning/advising, because the inscribed mark warns us of the Author and the value. But King Theodoric writes much more elegantly to Cassiodorus, Book 6 c. 7. V. E.: You decorate our liberality with another duty, so that the figure of our face may be impressed upon the usual metals, and you make MONEY to WARN future ages of our times. O great inventions of the prudent! O laudable institutions of the Ancestors! &c. "Ancient coins certainly warn us of many things which we would otherwise not know, they illuminate infinite things at which we are all blind, and they suffuse those studious of letters and ancient elegance with incredible joy," as the most famous Meibom praises them; whose words these are in an erudite Program of the year 1684, on the use of ancient coins in the illustration of the history of the Roman Emperors. And indeed, that passage brought from Cassiodorus is sufficiently illustrious, which, however, does not seem to prevent money from also warning us about public value, and so that no fraud easily occurs in the metal, the sign, the weight, or the price. See Schönborn, l. c. Just as that method of derivation is also quite notable, that namely, the effigy of the Prince impressed upon the money should warn the subjects (the subjects, I say, not just promiscuously others using it, for example, foreigners not subjects) that they are subject to the same person whose image they see on the coin. See Küzel, l. c. p. 19. Another synonym for a coin is pecunia money, as if pecudia cattle-money, said from the ancient word pecu cattle or pecude a head of cattle. For as Paul the Jurist testifies, originally, whatever was in the patrimony (to which indeed they also refer Exodus 21:21, where, however, a slave is metonymically [called] the money, i.e., silver of the Master, that is, silver, which even then...