kevikens

Great lyre. I also wanted to take a do-over on my own carnyz coins to get better images of the Gallic battle horn. Weird instrument it is with a kind of flapping dragon's mouth. It is still played in some parts of Europe and has been mentioned in the comic strip gallic warrior series. When you hear it you will hear a sound that could not be mistaken for someone else's battle horn. In case you cannot see it, the coin on the left (Sear 157) the carnyx is just above the shield and on the denarius on the right it is sticking out from just beneath the armor. On both coins the carnyx looks like a giraffe. Of course the bottom coin is lyre of Lycia, a half drachma.

Great coins and photos of them. By the way, as I did some research on this I was surprised to discover a number of sites that said that neither Greeks nor Romans used drums in their military, either for marching armies or rowing ships. Apparently the Greeks liked to use those pipes or flutes (they had reeds in them) to keep the cadence for both matching and rowing. and that the Romans preferred calling the cadence verbally or by centurions rapping their shields with their vine sticks. I had expected to find (from watching too many Hollywoowd productions) that drums, big booming kettle drums would show up in painted images and on coins. No fiddles, either.

I have some interest in music and got to wondering about musical instruments on Greek and Roman coinage. There does not seem to be much coinage picturing Ancient musical instruments, though we know, of course that they had them. I did find a few, such as the lyre, the carnyx, several kinds of pipes, trumpets, horns, organs, tambourines (but few actual drums). Below are two Roman denarii and a quinarius, each with the Celtic carnyx, with weirdly shaped heads and a late Greco Roman lyre.. One Imperial of Julia Domna has a hard to see tympanum (looks like a small circle) in her left hand. Perhaps some members might want to check their own coinage and see if they have any musical instruments on them. I think there is a Hadrian series with the sistrum, a kind of rattle on them. if you have such coins or if you know about Ancient music or their musical instruments please wtrite and post about them. Thanks

Possibly at one time looped and subsequently damaged in the mounting or later removal.

Double striking with a slight shift of the planchet or one of the dies between the strikes.

Shanxi, well how about that?

Thanks. That was just what I was looking for. But what does OU (Greek rendering of V) APIAS mean?

Hi, guys. I need some help with an ID on this 28 mm, 11 gram bronze from a Roman Provincial mint. The coin is well worn so the inscription is only partial. I thought I could see Septimius Severus there but I don't think I have ever seen a beardless Septimius, unless the heavy wear has worn it smooth. The reverse is not much of a help either. Any ideas much appreciated. Thanks.

Excellent analysis and I agree with your conclusions and at that price this is quite a find and a bargain to boot.

One other point. What may appear as traces of silver on some of these Alexandrine coins may be traces of potin which under the right conditions can be mistaken for silver, one reason why potin came to be used on these coins, to give them a deceptive silverish appearance. I don't claim that late plating was never done on Alexandrine tetras. Indeed, I have one from Alexandria, but it is of Ptolemy I circa 300 BC and the plating was obvious. Sorry to appear skeptical about this and I will do some more research on plating rather than using an amalgam low silver alloy as the method of debasement for late Alexandrine tetradrachms.

I did see it. It may have acquired a coating of silver oxide from being stored, for centuries, within a hoard of silver coins. I would have to see other examples, several, to determine if it was applied at the mint and in ancient times.

I have never seen an Alexandrian tetradrachm from after the mid Second Century AD with any visible silvering. Actually, right from the start of these issues the silver content always seemed to be an amalgam of some silver and copper, that is the entire coin was an alloy of silver and copper (and possibly tin or lead) melted together into a grayish appearance coin which after Commodus looks pretty much like a kind of bronze. This would prove to be an interesting study and I wonder if anyone (Harl?) has done one on the composition of the metal within and throughout the core metal of these coins as opposed to their surface appearance, as there clearly has been on the Third Century increasingly debased double denarius coins. I suspect that any late tetras from Alexandria with what appears to be silvering is something done outside the mint and possibly quite recently for not well informed tourists. It is also interesting to compare the Alexandria tetradrachm with the contemporary Antioch and other Eastern mint versions of the tetradrachm. They, too, were undergoing the debasement process but having started out with more silver in the First Century AD they retained a silverish appearance, again as an amalgam rather than plating, until their discontinuance mid Third century. A worthy study for someone who would like to do some graduate work in ancient numismatic archaeology. I'll be posting pictorial example in about 20 minutes. And here they are. On the obverse images, from the left, a tetradrachm of Nero, Alexandria mint, middle is a Nero tetra from Antioch, and on the top right an Alexandrian tetra of Vespasian. The two Alexandrians are each about 16.5 % silver but the tetra from Antioch is ca. 80% silver. The second or bottom row of the obverse coins are tetradrachms of ca, 250 AD. Again bottom, from the left an Alexandrian of Trajan Decius, an Antioch tetra of Philip the Arab and on the right an Alexandrian of Gallienus from ca, 260 AD. The second set are their reverses. The Decius coin is ca, 7.5 % silver, the Gallienus is about 4%. Neither has a silvery appearance. The Antioch tetra of Phillip is 12% silver and it still has a somewhat silvery appearance. Most of these observations come from the Kenneth Harl Book, Coins in the Roman Economy, one that I heartily recommend for those interested in the fabric of Roman coinage. Bottom line for me is that the Alexandrian tetradrachms lost any appearance of being silver by the start of the Third Century, AD, whereas the Antioch tetras retained enough silver in them to give a kind of silvery image, but using an amalgam of silver, not plating, like the Roman mints double denarii chose to do. Four % silver as an amalgam is invisible silver whereas as plating a la the Roman mint coins gave them a silvery appearance, for a while, anyway.

Tooling? I don't think so. The weight is a bit light but is what one naturally might expect from a coin with this much wear (still almost all silver in the time of Claudius). With this much wear a fourree would be much lighter than 3.64 grams. If I saw this coin at a show and could get it a good price I'd have bought it. Denarii of Claudius are not easy to come by.

The word, " bank" originally meant a bench where money changers set up in the market place or in a forum. They had balance scales to determine weight and touch stones to determine metal and its purity. More like a flea market table than a bank building. Temples often served as a repository for large sums of cash. Loaning money was often done privately at home with contracts and witnesses and sureties for repayment . The Roman courts would enforce such contracts (much of Roma law dealt with loans and debts) and many a young Roman found himself insolvent from contracting bad debts. Julius Caesar played this game as a young man but good fortune (a political office, Pontifex Maximus) saved him. Juno Moneta had her eye set on furthering his career.

Donna, may I suggest that you obtain a sestertius or two of Antoninus Pius. One of the reasons I collect ancients is that I am fascinated at the high quality work that ancient celators could do and those of Antoninus Pius, especially the large sestertii of the Pax Roman are examples of the best work available to collectors at a still reasonable cost. The price of these big sestertii for other emperors of the Pax Romana can be quite expensive and finding them in really nice condition is not so easy as those of Antoninus. Also at the end of his reign the Roman began to reduce the zinc in their coinage and replace it with lead making them very dark in appearance, something I don't like. They also shrank in size. Earlier than Antoninus the brass is large and often light in color but as these were among the most popular emperors (meaning they threw their weight around, killed a lot of people and expanded their conquests) historians (and numismatists) have made their coinage more desirable. I have here four of these Antonine sestertii, three of Antoninus himself and one of his adopted son and heir, and co-Caesar, Marcus Aurelius. As readers can see they are attractive and none of them broke the bank in their acquisition. The reverse of the Aurelius is HILARITAS, of the upper right coin, SALUS, of the coin of the lower right, Mars and of the lower right, INDUVLGENTIA.

I think your example of the siliqua is what is usually described as a "heavy" siliqua. They began to decline in weight pretty quickly to about two grams and under.

What are the weights of those two siliquae?

Probably a long shot but a few years ago I attended a coin show where a dealer had a tray of well over a hundred coins which shared in the shape of your coin. Every blessed one was in this shape (oblong?) and they were being sold as 1/3 stater coins. I bought one which weighed about 2.8 grams. They were said to be coins of Lycian Dynasts. I am sorry I no longer have it or I would have posted its image. Perhaps this will be of some help in your id search.

Nicely done.

Now that is an impressive coin, one of museum quality.

Great thread. I am always glad to see threads like this because I don't know as much about the coins or the history of an empire that tends to get short shrift from both numismatists and historians. As for the question of the OP I think that for much of the history of the Empire, the Byzantines could produce high quality craftmanship in both designing and minting coinage. But for most of their coin producing history it was not essential or even desirable to do so. The emperors were not trying to terrorize their populace into complying with their policies, so no scowling Caracallas or Diocletians were required. Byzantine emperors were, or wished to be seen, as ethereal, above the more mundane matters of day to day administration, more in harmony with the Divinity than a Divinity himself. No, not a divinity but very close to the one God who rules the universe, who ought to be the one most noticed. I have here four coins that illustrate what I am driving at, good fabric, good design, good imagery and a pleasing, respectful appearance, one to inspire confidence but not hubris. From the top, a tremissis of Justinian. Though a small coin, only 1.4. grams, the Celator here has done an excellent job of making the emperor look like he knows what he is doing. It is Sear 149. The second coin is a silver hexagram of Constans II illustrating an irenic and calm confidence in an orderly transition of power (hopefully). It weighs 6.49 grams and on the reverse (still in Latin) is "God, help the Romans" and this solid chunk of silver and fatherly visage makes it seem He will. The third coin is a somewhat unusual semis of Syracuse, still in Byzantibe hands in 835 when this coin was issued showing Theofilus on both sides. It weighs in at 1.7 grams but it is somewhat debased and is probably about 18 k gold, not the 24 K gold Byzantine coins were usually still minted at. The Byzantines were under great pressure in Southern Italy at the time. It is Sear 1672. Last is an electrum nomisma of Michael VII issued just after the heavy loss to the Turks at Manzigert, with Christ, the ruler of all, reminding the faithful that all power is in His hands. Even if the gold content is debased, all's right in this world yet. It is Sear 1868 and weighs 4.4 grams.

Also to be considered, is the large numbers of plated coins, possibly issued by the Athenian government itself during the latter part of the Peloponnesian War. Judging from the huge number of coins with test cuts from this period it would seem to indicate somebody turned out a lot of these debased coins.

The weight is certainly within the denarius range, especially as this specimen shows some wear and probable weight loss. If the RPC is correct, (I have reservations about accurately assessing the fineness of Roman coinage) the fineness is about 10% less than that of a Tiberius denarius so it may or may not have circulated at a discount in the market place but I am certain the money changers would have been careful to have taken into account any differential between the silver of Caesarea and Rome.

Your coin so much resembles the traditional "Tribute Penny" of the New Testament that I wonder if it might have been the other kind of coin "whose image and inscription are upon it" that Jesus of Nazareth used to make his point about taxes to Caesar, especially as it came from an Eastern mint. Do you know if the weight and fineness of fabric was equivalent to the Tiberian denarius out of Rome?

These Cappadocian drachmas were so close in appearance and fabric to the denarius that I have to wonder if they circulated as the equivalent of the denarii, especially among the large illiterate population.