Ok, well more than 500 miles apart, 652 miles if you’re flying, and approximately 500 years separated my two latest purchases. Since they now share space and looked kind of interesting together ,I took a pic of them together. I love the owl and will eventually put together a set of all the denominations of Athenian owls. ATTICA, Athens. Circa 353-294 BC. AR Hemidrachm (11.5mm, 2.07 g, 9h). Helmeted head of Athena right, with profile eye and pi-style palmette / Owl standing facing between olive branches. Kroll 19c–h; HGC 4, 1642. Near VF, toned, typical compact flan for issue, area of weak strike on obverse. This one just caught my eye. I like the portrait and the reverse is interesting with the 2nd figure kneeling next to a standard pose of Salus. Caracalla. AD 198-217. AR Denarius (19mm, 3.60 g, 6h). Laodicea mint. Struck AD 199-200. Laureate, draped, and cuirassed bust right / Salus standing left, holding serpent-entwined scepter, extending hand to woman kneeling before her. RIC IV 350; RSC 558a. Good VF, lightly toned. Ex Classical Numismatic Group Electronic Auction 386 (9 November 2016), lot 600. Post anything you like.
Both beautiful coins. There is something particularly nice about that Caracalla though. Great obverse.
Yeah, great coins. Even though I don't collect ancients, I can appreciate the quality and the visages. Thanks for posting.
Oh, I love that little owl. And the portrait of young, presumably still-innocent Caracalla is wonderful. Not paying much attention to the legends at first, I thought it looked like Geta. The title of course put a song lyric in my brain. (That seems to be happening a lot lately). Found this funny meme about that. If you walked 500 miles with Scotland as your starting point (never mind 500 more), you'd be doing more swimming than walking.
Just a casual comment, but it seems to me strange how thin on the ground the small denomination owls seem to be. Do others agree? I wonder how easy it was to do business in that famous Athenian agora - were people waiting around for change all the time? Many years back I recall taking a 175 honda over to see Dick Plant in Doncaster (I recall this because an incident to do with the chain meant I arrived with hands covered in black oil - not a great plan on a numismatic visit) Anyhow, I mention this because he had just done a swap with the BM (ah those were the days) and had got a tiny owl of some kind at his end of the bargain. He complained when he showed it that he wished he got a bigger denomination, but personally I thought it was cute, and I hardly ever noticed a really tiny one ever since then............. Rob T
Excellent acquisition, @H8modern! I have no Athens owls (not counting a new style tet from a large lot). The fractional is very interesting and they are so much less common than the ubiquitous tetradrachms!
I wish you the best on your quest. It will not be easy. I have no delusion of ever owning a dekadrachm and have so miserably failed to find a 1/8 obol that I wonder if they exist. The few I have seen of the weight seem to be Eastern copies or so eroded that I wonder if they started as hemiobols and lost metal. My smallest is a real dog with obverse so off center that all we see is helmet crest. The face is off the flan. Athens, 365-333 BC, AR tetartemorion (1/4 obol) 0.15g, Svoronos plate 17, 56, Athena hd rt / crescent AΘE Hemiobols are easy. They look like the common obols but weigh less. This one is 0.35g. 3/4 obols are scarce. I got lucky finding mine in an old NFA sale from the days when NFA customers were largely into big coins. Athens, 393-300 BC, AR tritartemorion (3/4 obol) 0.5g, Athena hd rt / 3 crescents AΘE The same NFA sale in 1990 provided my pre-Classical obol with three separate tail feathers. 0.7g. Later styles are easy to find. These are not. There are thousands of mint state tetradrachms. Condition fanatics will find it a bit harder to find these small ones in high grades. They were not buried in huge pots but tend to have been lost in daily commerce as individuals. The Caracalla is a very nice coin from Rome RIC 42! I disagree with CNG on this one. Mine is the version from Laodicea. Am I wrong?
It might end up being a “selection” of Athenian coinage mixing styles, periods and denominations but not necessarily a “mint set”.
Your obol is amazing. Based on the specimens I’ve seen, that’s probably a $1500+ coin in today’s auctions. I’m guessing you probably paid less than 10% of that which is as fantastic as the coin itself.
Yes that looks right to me - the pics look like stray losses of coins that were working hard in the market place. Leaves open the question - how much of this sort of Athenian small change was ever put out in the first place? I should confess that whenever I hear TV history programs rattling on about Athens being the birthplace of democracy I kind of grit my teeth, and wonder - was it really? The fragments of text I have come across suggest to me that moves towards democracy, a market economy and scientific objectivity all went hand in hand and got a lead amongst the Ionian Greeks in the East, being blocked by Dorians such as Sparta in the West. Thus Athens was more the place where the two factions battled it out. Certainly if you want to find a lot of coins that would be useful in day to day contexts - Miletos and the rest of the Turkish littoral surely looks a better bet? But maybe we just do not have all the evidence? I heard a fascinating but troubling paper a few years back by a young archaeologist. He was looking at Roman sites, comparing coin finds where the excavator put the spoil past a metal detector - with sites where they did not. As I best recall - his preliminary conclusion was that only 5% of the coins will be spotted without a metal detector! Gives pause for thought........... Rob T
London to Edinburgh is just over 400 miles. Poetic license and rounding up, it's near enough. Edinburgh to the south coast of England and back would be about 500 miles and 500 more, but annoying to go all that way only to have to come straight back. Land's End to John O'Groats - furthest points in the UK - is just under 1,000 miles. I've cycled it, which felt quite long. Would take a long time to walk.
