Understanding an idea situated in the past is not just a matter of relying on words, i.e. etymology or the way the Ancients used a word. Even iconography is a vector, often very telling, of the content that the Ancients attributed to a concept. And the Romans often gave us the impression that they had justice and equity "before their eyes" (as the jurist Ulpian puts it, in D. 13, 4, 4, 1). An iconographic journey, especially through imperial coins, shows us that, even if aequum is a Roman idea, it must at some point have been enriched with new content through contact with Greek thought, in particular with the concept of dikaiosyne.
Traces of this exchange between cultures date back at least to the 2nd century BC, in the comedy of Plautus(Miles 725-732) and Terence(Heautontimoroumenos 642-646). This encounter led to a twofold enrichment of the two notions: aequitas and dikaiosyne, which worked like two bridges between two shores.
