Two Weights

Sale: CNG 81, Lot: 1217. Estimate $300.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 20 May 2009.  Sold For $1050. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Coin Weight. Late 5th-mid-6th centuries. Æ Exagium Solidi Weight (4.02 g). Weight is a bronze heptagon with engraved Mαρκιανου? monogram, all inlaid with silver. Cf. Bendall, Weights 15a-b (for similar monogram); cf. Rochesnard p. 51 (for general type). VF, light cleaning marks on obverse, traces of encrustation. Rare.

During the later Roman Empire, coin weights began appearing with the legend exagium solidi, a phrase which has often been translated as “the weight (or weighing) of a solidus”, in order to deal with the practice of clipping. Exagium derives from the Latin exigere (lit. “to drive out”). However, extant examples of these weights vary and some weigh much less than the 4.5 g of a full-weight solidus. These lower-weight weights are thought to possibly represent the lowest acceptable weight for solidi, and were used by the exauctores auri to withdraw under-weight solidi from circulation and thereby maintain an acceptable weight standard minimum for solidi to circulate at full value. To date, the majority of the known weights bear imperial busts, rather than the monogram of the eparch, under whose authority the exauctores auri operated; those that do have the eparchs’ monograms were of glass. It is difficult to determine with more accuracy who is the Mαρκιανος mentioned here.