Sestertius

Uncommon card · No. 162955

The sestertius (pl.: sestertii) or sesterce (pl.: sesterces) was an ancient Roman coin. During the Roman Republic it was a small, silver coin issued only on rare occasions. During the Roman Empire it was a large brass coin. The name sestertius means "two and one half", referring to its nominal value of two and a half asses (a bronze Roman coin, singular as), a value that was useful for commerce because it was one quarter of a denarius, a coin worth ten asses. The name is derived from semis, "half" and tertius, "third", in which "third" refers to the third as: the sestertius was worth two full asses and half of a third. English-language sources routinely use the original Latin form sestertius, plural sestertii; but older literature frequently uses sesterce, plural sesterces, terce being the English equivalent of tertius. A modern shorthand for values in sestertii is IIS (Unicode 𐆘), in which the Roman numeral II is followed by S for semis, and the whole struck through; but because this...

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