The libral standard compares the weight of

coin A coin is a small, flat (usually depending on the country or value), round piece of metal or plastic used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order ...

s to the bronze '' as'', which originally weighed one

Roman pound The ancient Roman units of measurement were primarily founded on the Hellenic system, which in turn was influenced by the Egyptian system and the Mesopotamian system. The Roman units were comparatively consistent and well documented. Length T ...

, but decreased over time to 1/2 pound (the semi-libral standard). It is often used in discussions of ancient cast coinage of central Italy, especially

Etruscan coins Like the Egyptians, Phoenicians and Carthaginians, the Etruscans were rather slow to adopt the invention of coinage. The brief period of Etruscan coinage, with the predominance of marks of value, seems to be an amalgam that reconciles two very ...

and

Roman Republican coinage Roman Republican currency refers to the coinage struck by the various magistrates of the Roman Republic, to be used as legal tender. In modern times, the abbreviation RRC, "Roman Republican Coinage" originally the name of a reference work on the t ...

. The adjective ''libral'' is related to ''libra'', the

Ancient Roman In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–50 ...

unit of weight, and is not related to the word '' liberal''. The libral standard began with the era of the so-called aes grave (heavy bronze) cast coinage of Rome, from circa 280 BC, where one ''as'' weighed one Roman pound ( libra), or twelve Roman ounces ( unciae). This changed when the weight of the aes grave was decreased to approximately 10 unciae (the "light libral standard") circa 265-217 BC, remaining at that level until about 217 BC. It then suddenly fell to 6 unciae (the "semi-libral standard") around the start of the second Punic war in about 217 BC, before finally falling still further until about 141 BC.Crawford 1974:131-236 The libral/semi-libral standards were followed by the triental standards and the sextantal standard. Many Greek city states (colonies) were founded on the Italian peninsula and Sicily during this time period; these are collectively referred to as

Magna Graecia Magna Graecia (, ; , , grc, Μεγάλη Ἑλλάς, ', it, Magna Grecia) was the name given by the Romans to the coastal areas of Southern Italy in the present-day Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania and Sicily; the ...

. The coinage of those city-states is more closely related to the rest of the ancient Greek world (which included many colonies along the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on ...

and

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Rom ...

coasts), and generally has no relationship to the Etruscan/Roman units.

Notes

References

* Crawford, Michael H. (1974). ''Roman Republican Coinage'', Cambridge University Press, 2 Volumes. Coins {{Italy-stub