C 520 ] 
they received, not of their nominal pay on the 
Qusftor s booK. Tne foot foldier, therefore, was paid 
at the rate of 5^ Jjjfes a day, which, in a country 
where a traveller might have his lodging and all ne- 
celTaries on the road for half an As would be 
great pay, had not their cloathing, arms, and tents, 
been deducted out of it, as they were (9). But both 
the public and private riches of the Romans were 
increahng very taft when Polybius wrote, and the 
prices of all the neceflaries of life mufl: have increafed 
in proportion, therefore it is probable that the foldier’s 
pay was raifed to 5 AJJes on the Quasftor’s book, for 
which they received a Quinarius, before Csfar aug- 
mented it. 
If the Pound weight of gold was worth 900 
Denarii, 84 of which were coined out of the Pound 
of filver, the value of gold to filver muft have been 
in the proportion of 900 to 84, or as lO-^. to i . And 
if this was the value of gold at Rome fixty-two years 
after their firft coinage of filver, it proves that no 
fewer than 84 Denarii were then coined out of the 
Pound. Now by an article in the treaty with the 
Etolians, about eighteen years after this hrft coinage 
of gold at Rome, that people were permitted to pay 
one third of their tribute in gold, at the rate of one 
Pound of gold for ten of filver (1). Therefore gold 
was then but ten times the value of filver in Greece ; 
and it could not be much higher at Rome, where 
filver was eheemed the more uieful metal, as appears 
by the limitation of the fum to be paid in gold, to one 
(8) Polybius, L. IT. p, 103. 
(9) Polybius, L. VI. p. 484. Tariti Annal. L. I. § 17. 
(i) Polybius, Excerpt. Legat. § 28. Livy L. XXXVllI. 
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