a silver coin in use among the Romans.

Some authors make two kinds of sesterces, the less called sestertius, in the masculine gender; and the great one, called sestertium, in the neuter; the latter containing a thousand of the other.

Others will have any such distinction of great and little sesterces unknown to the Romans: Sestertius, say they, was an adjective, and signified as sestertiarius, or two asses and an half; and when used plurally, as in quinquaginta sestertiium, sesteria, it was only by way of abbreviation, and there was always understood millia, or thousand.