The gold coin "celebrating" the death of Julius Caesar was returned to Greece. The coin was supposedly found years earlier in Greece. Are they 100% sure of this? Any photographic evidence? Then, the eventual purchaser, an American billionaire, gives it up. Was he compensated for his actions? Can any country now make claims like this? Just askin', for a friend.
Imagine if the Russian Federation would do the same? Here you have a corrupt leader, wanted for war crimes asking for coins found in Russia to be seized by Democratic govts and return them to his "Evil Empire" as Reagan stated.
Like every other ancient coin collector, I don't want this type of thing to snowball to the point of absurdity. However, IF this particular coin WAS illegally looted from a protected site, then returning it to the country of origin and punishing the criminals involved seems like the rational thing to do. A line has to be drawn somewhere, and I obviously don't want the coins in my humble collection to be deemed contraband. But considering the value, historical significance, and alleged way that is was obtained, this situation falls firmly on the other side of the line in my opinion. This is terribly unfair for the purchaser of the coin, and they obviously should be reimbursed by the perpetrators to the extent possible. But, personally, I find it hard to be overly concerned about a billionaire recouping a few million measly dollars.
In 42BC there was NO Greece. It was a Roman province. The coin was struck from Roman gold/ probably plundered. Before Alexander III of Macedon looted the entire Persian treasury. All these treasures were looted at some point in history. Maybe this coin was found by a metal detectorists/ or it was a "lucky" discovery by a hiker. It certainly was not stolen from a Greek museum. Greece is only a modern Country/ after it gained ind. from the Ottoman Empire in 1821.
I'm not saying that Greece has a rock solid historical claim to the coin. But, if the coin was found in an area that Greece had deemed to be a protected site, then they would have a legitimate legal claim to it. As an analogy, it makes no sense for the US government to lay claim to Native American artifacts. However, it would be illegal for a person to find such an artifact in a National Park and keep it for themselves. Not because it belongs to the government, but because one of the rules of National Parks is that you can't take stuff like this out of them (It is by definition "Public Property"). I don't know enough about the specifics to understand the legal implications in this case. Just saying that, if it played out as claimed, then I think that Greece has a legitimate case.
Historians are pretty confident this aureus (and the similar silver denarii) was minted for Brutus and Cassius' army, which was concentrated near Philippi, a few km North of Kavala, Greece. This means it was more than probably minted there. Of course the present Republic of Greece (its official name : Helliniki Dimokratia) did not exist yet back then. But for a nation like the Greeks such a consideration is irrelevant: Greeks have existed as a people since even longer than the Jews. Their language was already written in the 14th c. BC on clay tablets found in the very places the Greeks are still living today, like Cnossos, Pylos, Mycenes, etc. Their culture and literature is older than the Bible. Of course, in 3600 years of history, they have experienced a great variety of political regimes : Bronze Age kingdoms, city-states with all the different political regimes you can figure (monarchies, aristocracies, oligarchies, democracies), empires, constitutional kingdom, parliamentary republic. They followed different religions too, but never stopped being Greeks, speaking Greek and feeling Greek. For them in ancient times there were two kinds of people : the Greeks and the others whom they used to call indistinctly "Barbarians", that is to say the non-Greek. I understand it may be difficult to figure for Americans whose history as a nation is just 400 years old. The Greeks have been around for 3600 years, always living on the same land as today... They always had an existential bound with this land. In Aeschylus' Persians, a tragedy that premiered in Athens in BC 472, there is a patriotic song expressing this feeling : You offspring of the Greeks, come on! Free your native home! Free your wives, your children, the temples of your father’s gods, the burial places of your ancestors! The time has come to fight for all of these! They don't fight just to defend their homes and families, they fight for "the temples of their father's gods and the burial places of their ancestors". They changed their religion since, but not their minds: today they will reclaim the pieces of the temple of Athena even if they don't believe in this goddess any more. Naturally, all antiquities from the Mycenaean, Classical and Byzantine times are assimilated to these ancestral temples and graves. The EID MAR aureus was minted in Greece and is directly linked to events that took place in Greece. It obviously did not circulate (unlike another known specimen which is holed) because it is in perfect condition. When the American police established evidence its alleged provenance was forged, they made the necessary investigations to trace its actual provenance and found enough to conclude it had been discovered in Greece (probably in a tomb, that's where isolated aurei are most often found, because there is no word of a hoard). This is obviously why they took the responsibility to handle it back to Greece. As for the buyer, a person who has been willing to pay 3,250,000.00 GBP for this coin just cannot pretend he acted naively in good faith. Nobody invests more than 3 million dollars, pounds or euros without being sure the deal is 100% clean. Everybody in the art business knows Roma Numismatics has sometimes been auctioning very rare coins with unverifiable provenances (or no provenance at all), especially coins most often found in places that are at present war zones. Either this buyer was extremely naive and his financial advisors were too, or he knew the alleged "baron Dominique de Chambrier" provenance could not be independently verified and, when 3.25 Millions are at stake, it should have been a fckng red flag. He has chosen to take the risk, he lost.
@GinoLR It's a Roman coin, not a Greek one. The coin itself and the circumstances of its minting have nothing whatever to do with the Greek culture and history of which you speak. Of course, if it was recently illegally stolen from Greece then it should be returned to Greece. But trying to establish a modern-day legal claim to an artifact just because it may have originated there 2,000 years ago is a rather tenuous case IMO.
Greece is not claiming the wonderful coins of Syracuse, though they are typical Greek coins and not Roman ones. This aureus is historically linked to an important war taking place in the Roman province of Macedon, now Northern Greece. It would never have circulated in Rome or Italy, where it would have seen as a provocation, a blasphemy, and immediately been melted! Only the Oriental Romans and the Oriental client kings supported Brutus and Cassius...
Yes, an important Roman civil war that had nothing whatever to do with the classical Greek history and culture you were talking about. The EID MAR coin was struck by a Roman general for his supporters, using Roman imagery (pileus) and Roman Latin inscriptions. There is no Greek connection at all. If you want to assign modern-day cultural heirs then manifestly it's Italy in this case. My point is simply that while the Greek government may have a perfectly legitimate legal claim to the coin, if you're going to play the whose-cultural-property-is-it game, then clearly in this case it's not the Greek government and they shouldn't be getting the coin.
i dont understand. In 2006, CNG London give back silver denarius to Greece. It was only 5th Eid mar to have proof of Hellenistic origin. SO WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER 80… I hope they have good proof for aureus…
I don't know if there has been a special study of the whole EID MAR emission, in silver and gold. You say there are 85 known but the PAS site says there re 60-70 denarii known... Anyways thanks for this info, and to @panzerman who told me there were three aurei known. 88 coins only, that's not much and the comprehensive catalogue could be done: number of obverse and reverse dies, present or last known location of each specimen, provenances, etc... Obviously, many were collected in the 17th-19th centuries and their initial provenance is unknown. The 3 British Museum specimens entered the collection in 1848, 1855 and 1860, all we know about them is the name of their previous owners such as the Lord of Pembroke... There are 5 specimens in the BNF collection, 2 of them fourrées, I did not find their provenances except for one which was donated in 1877 by the baron d'Ailly. All weren't hoarded soon after minting. One BM denarius and another one in the BNF have been circulated and even show banker's marks, an aureus has been holed to be made a jewel. The interesting question is : where did the specimens with known initial provenances come from? You said 5 were found in Greece. OK, good to know that. What about the others? Are there any other specimens with sure find locations out of Greece? A quick internet search shows 1 worn specimen found in UK, at Whitchurch-on-Thames (PAS), another one in the Capilna (Romania) hoard, another one found in the 19th c. at Joppa, Palestine (where is now Tel Aviv)... Don't worry about the good proof the aureus was recently found in Greece. The NY police would never have returned this more than USD 3 Million coin w/o firm evidence. I suppose Mr Beale cooperated with the police to negotiate a moderate sanction, and talked...
Just looked at my 1990 NFA XXV catalogue. The EID MAR coin had no prior auction records/ so must have been recent discovery/ circa 1990/ 1980s. However, I have at least 8 "unique" unpublished coins/ but paid less the 5K @. Unlike US coins were a recent Double Eagle 160 known sold for 312KUS. World/ Ancients are a bargain. The Saturnius Aureus NFA sold was a steal/ its still unique. NFA had some dynamite coins/ most in top quality/ like Tkalec AG.
Hi All, Of interest, the web page "EID MAR" at https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/denarius.html - Broucheion
I am hopeing that one day a hoard of them are found/ like those KOSON AV Staters found in Romania/ which I have a MS one/ for a princely sum of 1300 euros. Big hoards = average collectors have a chance to own one
