Roman currency

Roman money was called denarius and it was made of silver. Imagine you had five shiny rocks and you wanted to trade them for a toy. The Romans did the same thing, but instead of using rocks, they used silver coins.

To help people recognize how much the silver coins were worth, different denominations were made. The denarius was the most common and it was worth about one day's wage for a worker. There were also smaller coins like the quinarius, worth half a denarius, and the sestertius worth a quarter of a denarius.

The Romans used their money to buy and sell things, just like we do today. But unlike us, they didn't use coins for everything. For bigger purchases, like a house or land, they would use a different form of money called an aureus. This was a gold coin worth 25 denarii.

As time went on, the value of the denarius changed. Sometimes it had more silver in it, which meant it was worth more, and sometimes it had less silver, which meant it was worth less. The Romans also sometimes had to make new coins when they didn't have enough silver to make the old ones.

Eventually, the Roman Empire fell apart and their money became less and less valuable. But even today, we still use many of the same denominations that the Romans used, like the penny and the dime.