Roman Imperial Coin Inscriptional Lettering

CAPITALIS MONUMENTALIS LETTERING

I thought I would post this here because it might be of passing interest to some Roman Imperial coin collectors. It is actually a web page that I will be taking down shortly as I attempt to reduce the pages I maintain due to my diminishing vision and general old age infirmities. I have been a Calligrapher for the past some seventy seven years and so this subject fits in with my numismatic interests.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I feel my memory and mental capacity is rapidly deteriorating and I am now uncomfortable posting in Forums such as this. Please excuse any errors and inconsistencies.



Roman Imperial coin inscriptional letterforms are based on those of CAPITALIS MONUMENTALIS employed by stone cutters for edifices, monuments, tombstones, etc. A fine extant example is found on Trajan's column in Rome and the essential constructs of these letterforms are the models for all Majuscule (Capital) alphabets used in the western world. Stone cutters in particular still employ their distinctive proportions and terminating serifs. It should be noted that only twenty letters were normally used in the ancient Roman alphabet: A B C D E F G H I L M N O P Q R S T V X. Our modern J and U were not used, their equivalents being I and V respectively. Thus, our modern JULIUS was written IVLIVS. The letter K was seldom used and then only before A. The letters Y and Z were only used when reproducing Greek words. W was not part of the ancient Roman alphabet at all. It was Medieval scribes who formalized the construction models for the letters J K U W Y Z.

There are numerous excellent photographs of actual CAPITALIS MONUMENTALIS lettering (including that on Trajan's column) mostly accompanied by location information, translations and analyses, at Bill Thayer's Latin Inscriptions section of his LacusCurtius web site

Although in general the inscriptional letterforms employed by Roman Imperial coin die engravers, particularly those of the early Empire, closely follow CAPITALIS MONUMENTALIS letterforms there are some subtle differences, mostly resulting from the limited space available on coins for inscriptional lettering. Most notably, they were modified to produce closer spacing and a compaction of the wide letters C O Q and M resulting in more uniform and "square" lettering. The essential letterform constructs were closely followed for coins of the early to mid Empire who's inscriptions are generally stately and elegant: E and F have equal length horizontal bars; A has a sharp apex; V has a sharp junction; the bowls of B P R S are always nicely formed. P is frequently rendered on Imperial coins with an open bowl, i.e. not touching the vertical stem at the bottom - especially on coins of the early Empire. The quality of Roman Imperial coin lettering reached its zenith on late period Julio-Claudian coins.

Adaptation of Capitalis Monumentalis Letterforms by Coin Die Engravers




The coin die engravers used a selection of chisels (burins), stamps and punches -- the quality of the lettering may therefor have depended to some extent on the skill of the tool makers. The size of the planchet and the quality of the coin metal would also be determining factors. Certainly blundered letters did occur as evidenced by the S in CAES and COS on the following almost mint state Quadrans of Claudius. Rendering well proportioned and constructed Capital Roman lettering has always demanded considerable skill and it seems there has always existed a disparity of skills among the crafstsmen who executed them -- regardless of the tools and media employed.


CLAUDIUS, RIC Volume I, No. 88

Examples of early Roman Empire coin lettering







Examples of late Roman Empire coin lettering

 

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i'm going to educate myself on this more later, thank you sir for posting! these things you give & leave us will be your legacy.

 

Thank you for your interest gregarious. If you (or anyone else) would like to check out my Calligraphy pages (I will be taking them off-line shortly) they are at:

http://jp29.org/itdr.htm

 

thanks! i will. you cannot leave them for posterity?

 

I am working on it gregarious, but they require constant maintenance to keep them up to date. I am going to have to terminate my web service provider contract -- my dear wife cannot use it.

 

i understand sir. maybe we can download the info for the roman stuff here anyway.

 

Oh yes, of course, gregarious. Any member of this Forum is welcome to download and use any of the content you mention. I would appreciate an authorship aknowledgement however -- jamesicus will do just fine.

 

Great post!

Maybe Joe at http://www.forumancientcoins.com/ could host your site

 

jamesicus, thank you very much for taking the time to post this!

I found it very interesting and educational to me as a collector of imperial coins, and a topic I was largely ignorant of before reading your notes.

 

Hmm, I was going to save his pages to the Internet Archive ("Wayback Machine") but when I click to save a page (http://jp29.org/capitals.htm, for instance) I get a message saying

Page cannot be displayed due to robots.txt

Clicking for additional information appears to indicate the page cannot be saved to the archive. Does anyone know a workaround?

 

Thanks for that write-up, @jamesicus. I read your page some years ago and found it very educational. Glad to be able to finally thank the author .

 

Very useful information @jamesicus

 

of course!

 

Thank you so much for sharing with us your precious comments. You are so right to do so. This is a most valuable inheritage ! Wishing you good health and many more years to spoil ancient coin collectors.

 

you go TIF! i wish i could help, but you know my computer skills(turn on punch in enter, ima regular digital tim leary><)

 

Very cool info. Thanks for sharing Jamesicus!

 

WOW, you perform gorgeous work and this is a great write up.

LOL, my writing is ATROCIOUS. I print everything because no one can read my writing, and everyone COMPLAINS about my "printing"!

I learned a little calligraphy in middle school umpteen years ago. That was a disaster...

 

ha! i spent all my 2nd grade recess inside rewriting all my stuff>< AND have lost jobs because of my calligraphic writing a time of two><..

 

@jamesicus will need to change his htaccess file to allow others to access his page.

 

Jamesicus,
Thanks for such a valuable and interesting post. I've always had an interest in letter form and your breakdown of its stylistic evolution is a big help as an identification tool.