@zumbly posted a Roman Provincial portrait ID quiz earlier today. It's often tough to identify Roman emperors by their Provincial portraits. Just in case that point wasn't clear enough in Zumbly's quiz, here's another round . There are only ten questions. Know Your Ruler-- Roman Provincial Edition Quiz 2 You are prompted to enter a name but you can make up whatever name you wish. If you do take this quiz, please don't post any spoilers, okay?
Don't feel bad about it. On this test, 10% is a passing grade I trust that the test successfully made the point it was intended to make, right?
10% here too, what a shame. Tomorrow I suscribe to a "learn how to recognize emperors by their portraits" lesson... Well done @TIF, that quizz was very informative Q
Thanks, Q! For those who doubt that a test for which some of the brightest CoinTalkers are scoring only 10% could have any educational value, take it for yourself and see what Q is talking about The purpose is not to make you feel stupid. Be sure to review the correct answers at the end. (Well okay, maybe there is just a teensy bit of meanness involved )
haha.... yeah only 1 out of 10 for me too. That was a hard one. However, there are attributes for certain emperors that tend to extend across imperial and (well done) provincial portraits. Caracalla's orneriness, Elagabalus' weird sideburns, Gordian III's nose and boyish look, Antoninus Pius' head shape... It would be interesting to compose profiles of attributes that are consistent across portraiture. What makes emperor (or empress)_____ look like emperor (or empress)_____?
The point is that with provincials you cannot rely on portraits for identification. Rather, sometimes you can, but if the legends are not legible and you can't find a match in archives, you can't always say "this is a coin of emperor or empress X" just because you think it looks like him or her.
But did you review the answers and understand why I made this quiz? It was designed for people to score only ~10%.
I completely understood the purpose. It is just that after more than a decade of post-secondary education I am not used to getting 10% on any test.
10% too... I had to laugh when I saw the answers, one has to wonder what an emperor would have thought about how they looked on provincial coins
Off the scale funny TIF, have an imaginary drink on me. Yes I got 10% like the rest. My sincerest apologies if I ruined it for any players
Ryro, I just checked your answers. In a sense you scored 90%... for 9 out of 10 you chose the emperor's name for whom I thought the portrait most strongly resembled. You went for the bait on all except the last coin . "Bait" isn't really the right term... those engravers hadn't a clue, obviously! For that I say A+! I think you'd do very well on an identification test that wasn't purposefully tricky
I was starting to wonder if it wasn't a trick and they were all Caracalla! Haha! I do feel better hearing that though. I've just recently started really getting interested in provincials...