Constantine, get your finger out of there!

I'd been reading about the finger story for a while now but hadn't seen it reattached. I'll also point out that it's up for debate whether it's Connie or his son Constantius II (I think it probably is the long lived son).
Here's the massive finger, mistakenly identified as a toe:


Here's what it looks like reattached:


And the article from Smithsonian: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...ook&utm_medium=news_tab&utm_content=algorithm

Here's some coins of one of Rome's nastiest and most evil rulers (and that's saying something!) and son:


Post em if ya got em!

 

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this is the only one of him in my collection that i'm aware of...now i have several Crispus' coin....

 

Those are some big and creepy hands, @Ryro!



Too many to post, so I'll just post my latest acquisitions of each.

Constantine I:


Constantine I, AD 307-337.
Roman billion follis, 3.56 g, 23.6 mm, 6 h.
Thessalonica, AD 312-13.
Obv: IMP C CONSTANTINVS P F AVG, laureate and cuirassed bust, right.
Rev: IOVI CONSERVATORI AVGG NN, Jupiter, chlamys draped over left shoulder, standing front, head left, holding Victory on globe in right hand and leaning on scepter with left hand; at feet to left, eagle holding wreath in beak; -/-//•TS•Є•.
Refs: RIC vi, p. 519, 61b; Cohen 310; RCV 15972.

Constantius II:


Constantius II, AD 337-361.
Roman Æ 3 (1/4 maiorina?), 2.36 g, 18.7 mm, 11 h.
Siscia, AD 348-49, fifth officina.
Obv: D N CONSTAN-TIVS P F AVG, pearl-diademed, draped and cuirassed bust, right.
Rev: FEL TEMP REPARATIO, Phoenix, nimbate, standing right on mound of rocks; ЄSIS(symbol 5) in exergue.
Refs: RIC viii p. 366, 240; LRBC II 1133; RCV 18250; Cohen 58.

 

My best Constantine I:


My best C-II:


By the way, how could anybody ever misidentify a clear finger as a toe??

 

Great finger, and I agree with RC, how could anyone think that was a toe?!

Here's my newest Constantine, a tiny one issued in Rome just after his victory at the Milvian Bridge:

PACI PERPET, uh hunh.

 

Nastiest? Perhaps. But most evil? C'mon. At least Constantine restricted his murderous rampages to his own family. Compare that to what Caligula and Nero both did to the Senate, or what Theodosius I did to the Thessalonians.

 

Christian historiography was a lot kinder in its assessment of Constantine's reign. After all, without him Christianity may never have developed beyond the stages of an obscure eastern cult.
However, coins like the one below show that by the 330s, when this coin was struck Christianity was moving center stage:

 

I believe this is called not biting the hand that fed you.

 

Probably, but even without the bias of Christian historiography, one can see why Constantine became known as "the Great", which is an epithet that is rarely gained by kind and merciful, let alone weak rulers.

 

Sadly, true. No one would accuse Alexander the Great of being kind or merciful.

Antoninus Pius the Mediocre?

 

I love the portrait on this one because of its strong resemblance to the head of the Colossus of Constantine.




CONSTANTINE I
AE3. 3.4g, 21.3mm. Constantinople, AD 327-328. RIC VII Constantinople 22 (R3). O: CONSTANTI-NVS MAX AVG, rosette-diademed head right. R: GLORIA EXERCITVS, soldier standing left, looking right, holding spear and resting hand on shield; Γ in left field, CONS in exergue.
Ex Giovanni Dattari Collection

 

one with rare full silvering: Nicomedia 156

 

Some curator for the Louvre ala 1913 with some really thick glasses? And even more strange, how the heck did his finger get in France while the rest of him was in Rome?! When in 1471, Pope Sixtus IV, gifted the statue to the people of Rome did he hold on to the finger and gift it to a french buddy, have it stolen or maybe it was given away by an ancestor?
Or heck, maybe he didn't even have it and it was just the world's first case of a father telling a son to pull his finger!
Here's an urbs wolfie from back when I first started out buying and cleaning scrap LRBs...


And one of my best looking LRBs of Constantine's mom:

 

Why the Constantine hate?

“Here's some coins of one of Rome's nastiest and most evil rulers”

 

I feel like you can say that to just about every Roman emperor regardless of religious inclinations... life was different back then.

didn’t Constantine boil his wife alive, or was that someone else?

 

Though, admittedly a bit of hyperbole (most of them were pretty rotten) but let's weigh the pros and "Cons" (couldn't resist):
The guy bled his uncle to death, had his own son decapitated and, great call out @hotwheelsearl did boil his wife to death. It's one type of demented to kill enemies and strangers, but your own blood... SON, that's a whole nother type of sick.
I suppose I could've responded simply with a, what's to like about the guy?
He also killed, raped and ravaged thousands along with his troops. Killing entire towns just for being in the way, led alone the supporters of his adversaries.
I just don't get why folks think that because he may have had a pius ex prostitute for a mother, it doesn't make up for his atrocities that are massively overlooked due to some wanting to think fondly of him due to the latter implications of his actions and his mother's religious beliefs.
Murdered son and boiled wife:

Here is another coin of moms:

 

Just picked up a lot of 12 coins that i believe are all from the founding of Constantinople. Here are a couple of the highlights

 

The more I read the more reprehensible Constantine gets. However, being co-opted by the Christians as a paragon of holiness is proabbly one of the reasons why people think he's the bestest.

The sorry victims:
Such a pretty face, what a shame it got chopped off.


Although I think Fausta tastes great by itself, I am partial to a boiled specimen:


And the holy St mother whos probably part of these deaths to some extent:

 

Constantine united, and defended quite successfully, the Roman empire which in any time would be quite an amazing feat. Sure religion, marriage, alliances, betrayals and murder were all tools he used as did every one of his adversaries and just about every emperor before him. It's hard to set aside our modern view of what is a moral pursuit of power.

Fausta was the daughter of Maximian who turned on Constantine and she may have held treasonous resentment while in a marriage of a failed alliance. She ended up getting knocked up by Constantine's scheming bastard son Crispus and dying during a failed abortion. Had Constantine not executed his bastard son, Crispus likely would've repeated the dance and killed everyone else. I find it interesting that Crispus (usually in some moral way) is used as a reason Constantine was an evil ruler, when really he was just a bastard that was given the same chance Constantine himself got. Constantine very easily could've been dead at Diocletian's court, or in any one of the many battles he won while at a minimum assisting in the promulgation of Christianity that continues to this day. Oh and yea, built a city or two.

As far as his coins go, the bronze are accessible and a staple of any Late Roman Bronze collection: