Caligula denarius

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

This is about the most succinct summation of the Tribute Penny business. Whenever someone asks me for advice about collecting one, I tell them that if they really want to cover their bases, they've got to acquire not only the Tiberius denarius traditionally accepted as the Tribute Penny, but also the denarius of Augustus with Gaius/Lucius reverse, in addition to a few other types of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Germanicus. All of them are reasonable possibilities.

Personally, I think the use of the word δηνάριον in the synopic gospels is an anachronism, and the most likely candidate for the coin is the Antiochan tetradrachm of Tiberius/Augustus. We know for a fact, that these coins were used to pay the temple tax in Jerusalem during the time of Jesus.

 

*

 

Never seen a caligula Denarii before.. great piece.. must be pretty Scarce.

 

They do tend to be scarce. Much of the coinage of Caligula was recalled and melted down after his death. Because he was hated he was supposed to be damned (damnatio memoriae) for future generations. Some coins were deliberately damaged rather than melted.

Caligula was famous for being a mad tyrant and he is famous today. Ask a bunch of people which roman emperors they know and Caligua will be one of them along with Julius Caesar and Nero.

Also, he is one the twelve caesars as written by Suetonius. So for those who want to put together a 12 Caesars coin collection in silver, getting a Caligula is a necessary step. There are still quite a lot of his coins available in bronze, the Vesta as for example.

For all of these reasons his coins are desired and difficult to find. There is quite often a lot of competition among collectors when the coins appear.

Although this coin is not in the best of condition I am glad I bought it. I do not know how long I would have waited to find another.

 

Here we go again. Now we replace the Tyrian silver with that of Antioch? Maybe that is a fact but the verse in question has absolutely no relation to the Temple Tax that was paid to the Jewish authorities in the Temple but specifies paying taxes to Caesar=the Romans. I never see discussion of who paid this and how it was paid beyond the system involved Publicans or tax farmers who collected taxes however they could. Whether the Publican paid in gold by weight or denarii by count is not something I have seen discussed.

There are so many arguments from each of the sides that the event, if indeed there was a physical event rather than just a parable level report of a teaching fifty years before the gospel was written, was not intended by its author to be dissected to the degree that has become so fashionable. It is a lot like discussions of what kind of wood was used to make the 'True Cross' or whether the wine used at the Last Supper was red or white. What makes the Tribute Pennies sell is the hope of so many thousands of owners that their coin is the one with Jesus' fingerprints on it. The fact that the synoptics specify denarius would seem to keep people from proposing other coins but we prove regularly that you can prove anything with statistics and history properly manipulated. Speaking as someone who has seen almost everything he was taught in school changed, updated or disputed in only 50 years, I can not state anything as an absolute fact about something that may or may not have happened 2000 years ago without applying either Faith or Probability to the equation.

 

Cool addition! I got this one cheap, was listed as Vespasian. Actually my other Caligula As was also miss attributed (its gone now).