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| Roman Bronze As (pound) coin Obverse - head of Janus. Reverse - Prow of a ship |
You've likely heard the expression "penny wise and pound foolish" - meaning that you can pay attention to the details and still miss the big picture. This, of course, makes more sense when you understand that the penny and pound are units of money from the UK - not a mixture of money and weight as it first appears in the US. We are so used to decimal currency - 100 cents in a dollar - that it's easy to forget that currency hasn't always been like this. Before the radical attachment to multiples of ten, in both currency and metric measurement, usually the importance was in being able to break something into pieces of equal value.
