Sestertius Sestertius The sestertius (plural sestertii), or sesterce (plural 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
Denarius dinar currency. Its symbol is represented in Unicode as 𐆖 (U+10196), however it can also be represented as X̶ (capital letter X with combining long stroke overlay). A predecessor of the "denarius" was first struck in 267 BC, five years before the First Punic War, with an average weight of 6.81 grams, or of a Roman pound. Contact with the Greeks prompted a need for silver coinage in addition to the bronze currency that the Romans were using at that time. The predecessor of the "denarius" was a Greek-styled silver coin called the "didrachm" which was struck in Neapolis and