Central Italy, Undefined Italic Tribe, Aes Rude

Money can be found in the most various forms. Long before the introduction of coins the peoples of central Italy used cast lumps of bronze, or their fragments, as means of exchange. The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder referred to these bronze lumps in his encyclopedia "Naturalis historiae" as aes rude – as amorphous bronze in an unworked state. Numismatists have retained this expression.