vii.] INSTITUTE OF BANKERS. 211 



banker failed, those who had simply deposited money 

 with him for safety ranked before those who placed 

 sums with him at interest. But although they have 

 been the subject of various learned dissertations, it is by 

 no means clear how the Roman bankers kept their ac- 

 counts. We may hope that we shall ere long know more 

 about Roman banking, because the house and archives 

 of a Pompeian banker Lucius Co3cilius Jucundus 

 have recently been discovered in that city. 



By general consent gold, silver and copper have been 

 the metals used as money. Iron, indeed, is said to 

 have been used in Sparta, tinder the laws of Lycurgus, 

 but in this case there is no reason to suppose that it 

 was ever coined. It seems to have been used as it was, 

 according to Caesar, amongst the ancient Britons in the 

 form of bars. Pollux mentions that the inhabitants of 

 Byzantium, in ancient times, used iron for coins instead 

 of copper, and so have the Japanese, but on the whole 

 this metal is much too heavy in proportion to its value 

 for convenience. Coins of tin are reported to have 

 been struck by Dionysius of Syracuse, and subsequently 

 in Gaul, under the reigns of Septimius Severus and 

 Caracalla, but they appear to have been almost imme- 

 diately abandoned again. Cast coins of this metal were 

 in use among the ancient Britons the similarity of 

 such coins to those of silver constituted a very serious 

 inconvenience. Glass seems to have been likewise, at 

 one time, used for subsidiary coinage in Egypt and in 

 Sicily. Platinum was tried in Russia, but was found 

 unsuitable; lead is still used in Burmah; nickel in 

 Belgium, the United States, Switzerland, and Germany, 

 and in 1869 and 1870 we struck some nickel pence and 



p 2 



