The Roman Monetary System. In the most general terms, money is an agreed upon measurement for the economic value of items. If a seller and a buyer agree that one item is worth twenty dollars and another is worth ten dollars, the agreement says less about how much a dollar is worth than about the relative value of the two items. More importantly, both individuals are agreeing to use dollars to measure the relative worth of both items, as well as probably their own incomes, estates, and so on. In this sense, money can facilitate economic exchange through coinage, paper money, property, loans and interest, credit, or a variety of other goods. As in many areas, the Romans did much to standardize and make monetary systems efficient. Monetary value operated in exchanges of all scales, from buying food at the market...