Deinomenid

Please could you remind me what the column headings are. Second one is dates, is the first Thompson or you? And the 2 columns on the far right.

I'd second @Phil Anthos here. Cunliffe is a serious top academic who writes well (oxymoron?). He also wrote the Very Short Introduction to the Druids, re the above comment on their use of Greek.

If you look at a map of the Mediterranean "upside down" the whole place seems to open up more for a series of Greek settlements. Once you'd rounded the toe of Italy and passed the dastardly Etruscans there was a large natural basin and no obvious necessary divisions into "France" and "Catalonia". Some settlements are well-known, such as Massalia/Marseilles, but also Monoikos/Monaco, Nikea/Nice and Antipolis/Antibes. But not knowing where "France" stopped, trading posts continued into Catalonia, such as Emporion/Empuries and Rhode/Roses [home until not long ago of possibly the most famous restaurant ever, El Bulli]. There are some really interesting Greek coins from some of these cities, but the further west you go, the less research is easily available, partly reflecting output, perceived quality, quantity etc. All this is a long, roundabout way of saying Moneda Iberica is available online and has lots of very good examples of relevant coins. I only realized this from an advert for an upcoming ANS event. https://numismatics.org/the-long-table-series/ in mid May. As Moneda Iberica seems to be interested in non-Greek coins too (!) there are of course also good sections on all sorts of other "Spanish" coins too, Punic, Celtiberian etc - It's in Spanish (how dare they...) but autotranslates really easily. https://monedaiberica.org/ I know it's a somewhat obscure area in Greek coinage, but I thought I'd flag it. Here are a few coins of the area. Please feel free to post similar, comment etc! Emporion (Empúries) Silver, 0.87 g, Diameter 10.4 mm. Obol. 5th century BC Obverse: Two sphinxes facing, their heads joined in a janiform style Reverse: Incuse geometric shape (if you squint) Emporion. 3rd century BC. Hemiobol (Silver, 10 mm, 0.43 g). Laureate head of Apollo to right. Rev. Pellet within crescent. And back east, Massalia. Circa 460-450 BC. Hemiobol (Silver, 9 mm, 0.43g). Archaic head of Apollo to left. Rev. Crab; below, inverted M Fun fact : Julius Caesar (obviously much later than these coins) reported that the Gaulish druids, though preferring to commit to memory, used Greek as their written language of choice. (Commentarii de Bello Gallico, VI.14) The Druids do not go to war, nor pay tribute together with the rest; they have an exemption from military service and a dispensation in all matters. Induced by such great advantages, many embrace this profession of their own accord, and [many] are sent to it by their parents and relations. They are said there to learn by heart a great number of verses; accordingly some remain in the course of training twenty years. Nor do they regard it lawful to commit these to writing, though in almost all other matters, in their public and private transactions, they use Greek characters. That practice they seem to me to have adopted for two reasons; because they neither desire their doctrines to be divulged among the mass of the people, nor those who learn, to devote themselves the less to the efforts of memory, relying on writing; since it generally occurs to most men, that, in their dependence on writing, they relax their diligence in learning thoroughly, and their employment of the memory.

https://www.collector-antiquities.com/about-this-site/introduction.html In case it helps. Contact info there too.

Yep, the wink was a clue! I love this line - "yet he was kindly disposed towards the Athenians, once he had reduced the city to subjection"... And how he "somehow" got an asp bite. He's also the source of a good quote about Athenian bronze. It has often struck our notice that the course our city runs Is the same towards men and money. She has true and worthy sons: She has good and ancient silver, she has good and recent gold. These are coins untouched with alloys; everywhere their fame is told; Not all Hellas holds their equal, not all Barbary far and near. Gold or silver, each well minted, tested each and ringing clear. Yet, we never use them! Others always pass from hand to hand. Sorry brass just struck last week and branded with a wretched brand. So with men we know for upright, blameless lives and noble names. Trained in music and palaestra, freemen's choirs and freemen's games, These we spurn for men of brass...

There's a big new book out on Magna Graecia and Sicilian counterfeit coins, whose entire premise seems to be comparing real coins with fakes and ones by and large sold by Bertolami. The authors carefully point out that Bertolami knew it was selling fakes and marked them as such but the fact that they pump out such vast numbers of "coins to help us study" is such a problem. The book is 250 pages long.... Couple of random pages -

This is a slight possibility, as the bulletin is available to buy (lots of them were recently at auction for example)- it is just expensive. I see their action (lack) as more of a closed shop guild. As with their ~lily-livered response to the Beale situation.

That's a fantastic coin @Ryro! I can't bring myself to participate in ownership given they systematically destroyed most of the mints I'm most fond of in western (and much of the rest of!) Sicily. I know there's no internal logic to that and then owning coins from plenty of other places that did similar. My excuse is when I was a child a long time ago I stayed for a while near Sousse in Tunisia and was really shocked at the tophet we saw on some lane to nowhere (no doubt somewhere now again). I know the stories vacillate between child sacrifice and the expected high infant mortality but back then it was called child sacrifice. Rows on either side of little stone coffins (this was not the tophet of Carthage). That kind of put an early negative spin on them for little me. The section of the Aeneid set there is extraordinarily beautiful nonetheless 🙂. I have coins highly likely minted from captured Carthaginian booty, and others likely from war indemnities exacted from them, but that's little harsh here!

30 seconds on coinarchive has Leu, Roma, Oslo Mynt, Nomos, Solidus, Tauler, Davissons, Baldwins, but there are more. Some are not consistent either. Several times at "tippy-top" houses I've seen it too, and then could not trace it later. I assume similar to @John Conduitt's comment, sometimes they are memory hole'd into nonexistence.

Mot auction houses I follow, from the most exalted to the lowliest, remove either the image or the image and description of withdrawn coins. My (possibly incorrect) assumption is the coins are mostly withdrawn because they are fake and if so it's really frustrating as it makes it so much easier for the coins to pop up for sale elsewhere, plus it removes a way to educate oneself on what to look for etc. Sometimes it seems as if fairly large parts of the professional selling community are actively acting against the full and free sharing of information on forgeries. One obvious example is how despite their (IAPN) professed interest in removing forgeries, they keep the lists hidden and - from what little I have seen - numbers of coins on their special lists don't make it to forgerynetwork etc. "The Bulletin of Counterfeits and the online IBSCC-Archive are restricted to members only" I'm sure there must be a good, fair reason for this apparently Orwellian behaviour, but I'm struggling to see what it is. Also are there any workarounds to the Memory Hole? Wayback engine-type crawls over recent now deleted posts? This sort of thing, with fingers not particularly pointed at the companies on the screenshot. It's almost ubiquitous -

I spent a good 15 minutes tying to persuade and then telling off Claude AI for refusing to acknowledge the existence of Telos. I was trying to find out more about the Gela connection you mention (the Rhodes part is ~ well-known but I had missed that part). It turns out some of the databases are so dogmatic they refuse to link Tilos and Telos. "Unfortunately, I do not have any definitive information about an ancient island called "Telos" that I can confidently provide details about. This name does not ring a bell in terms of my knowledge of ancient Greek geography, history or mythology." That was only the start of it! I wish I had something from Astypalaia, Halki, or Nisyros. (If they are allowed to exist by our AI overlords.) Here's from from Kos though, with a disconcertingly giant-eyed Demeter. Circa 345-340/30 BC. AR Didrachm (18.49mm, 6.57 g, 12h). Ma–, magistrate. Bearded head of Herakles right, wearing lion skin / Veiled head of Demeter left.

She had 473 obverse dies for 3,866 rev at one stage. Not sure how that has changed since. The problem with this and the other question is we usually rely for answers on New Style questions on err @NewStyleKing! 🙂

Agreed! They are a small percentage of the total output. Many congratulations. The temple is something special and likely much older as a sacred site than the city. When I was there, there was a guide loudly proclaiming it Emperor Otto's camp (apparently he was based at it). I wept a little inside 🙂 Nomos, c. 510-470, medium incuse (class ix), meta, ear of barley with six grains, rev. similar but incuse, 7.93g

Of transitional owls? I saw endless “regular” ones but I think op means Starr I-IV by transitional.

It’s supposed that they are the flans as the tongs holding the hidden object are not suitable for the heavier ingot and even the angle and the position of the little creature’s hand make it almost impossible to hold an ingot. Of course all this presupposes a lot of accuracy and knowledge by the painter!