Note 528 — Chapter IV · THE CENTURIES AND THE CLASSES

After the adoption of the as of an ounce weight in 217, sixteen asses of this standard were considered equivalent to a denarius or a drachma, which would give a rating of 160,000 asses for those who wore the cuirass. But the military pay was still reckoned at ten asses to the denarius (Pliny, N. H. xxxiii. 3. 45); the censors seem to have used the same ratio (Livy xxxix. 44. 2 f. compared with Plut. Cat. Mai. 18); and it is therefore highly probable that in this statement Polybius intended to express in drachmas the value of 100,000 asses. Taken in its entirety, the passage sufficiently proves that reference is to the highest class; the majority (οἱ πολλοί) of soldiers, he says, have breastplates, but those rated above 10,000 drachmas wear cuirasses. If, as Belot, Rév. écon. et mon. 77 ff., imagines, the sum of 100,000 asses fell below the rating of the lowest class, there would hardly have been a soldier without the cuirass.