The siliqua (pl. siliquas or siliquae) is the modern name—given without any ancient evidence to confirm the designation—to small, thin, Roman silver coins produced in the 4th century and later. When the coins were in circulation, the Latin word siliqua was a unit of weight or value defined by one late Roman writer as one twenty-fourth of a Roman solidus.
The term siliqua comes from the siliqua graeca, the seed of the carob tree, which in the Roman weight system is equivalent to 1⁄6 of a scruple (1⁄1728 of a Roman pound or about 0.19 grams).
