Last night I was reading up on the Roman monetary system, and was reminded that a sestertius was 1/4 of a denarius. A denarius was abbreviated with an X; and a sestertius, unaccountably, with an HS. What the hell was that H? And I figured it out: it’s not an H, it’s IIS, i.e. II et semis, two and a half, a quarter of X. I’ve spent my whole life around Classicists and I never could get anyone to tell me what that meant, but I’m sure my guess here is right.
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That’s pretty cool. How would you explain why the name arrive at the quantity from the opposite direction – semis/tertius: half [short of] the third (if my lexicon is correct), as Germans say ‘halb drei’ for half past two? Just an oddity sanctified by tradition?
Yes. Lord knows the Latin language itself can be classified as an “oddity sanctioned by tradition.” Like “duodeviginti” (which every Romance language corrected to “decem octo”). For the longest time I just presumed a sestertius was a sixth of something, but obviously it is not.
And in fact, this information is in Lewis and Short (though I did not know it), and it confirms the IIS suspicion.