Happy Birthday Rome!! Even though I do not know you...my wife is from there!! LOL Many more....No I have no Roman coins..but I really admire them. Nice coins guy's!! RickieB
Wow ! Amazing thread. My wife went to her first coin show recently. She was interested in the ancients. Fascinating stuff.
My favorite (and only) Roman silver coin. With any luck it will have some company soon. Happy Birthday Rome! Andy
My avatar came from this one: Maximinus Thrax Denarius - Salus Laureate, draped and cuirassed bust right IMP MAXIMINVS PIVS AVG Salus seated left, feeding from patera a serpent arising from altar SALVS AVGVSTI Catalog: RIC 14 RSC 85a Maximinus was supposedly over 8' tall He was a professional wrestler, the Roman version of Jesse Ventura
that's right. i've heard tell of ritual strangulation and a triumph, but it's just idle talk and rumor. still here, and still collecting coins. v.
Here's to Rome. I was hooked on Roman history ever since i found a Roman denarius (Vitellius) not 300 meters from my garden. I have to wonder what pushed them to conquer and settle alien and hostile lands so far (and different) from Italy (they probably didn't know what the weather here was really like!). An amazing people and culture. Here are some of my favourites from my collection: Galba, Titus, Marcus Aurelius (the Philosopher), and Vespasian.
Here is a coin celebrating Rome as the eternal city. Constantine I A.D. 320 20x19mm 3.0gm Obv. CONSTA-NTINVS AVG laur. helmet, cuir. Rev. ROMAE AETERNAE [To everlasting Rome] Roma std. r., shield in lap inscribed X/V [fifteen yearly vows (quindecennalia)] in ex. R eros (in Greek) Q RIC VII Rome 194 r3 Part of this mint mark is a cryptogram, and is Greek for eros, which in Latin is amor. Amor and Roma are palindromes-- they read the same backward or forward. Amor was the secret name of Rome. This may have been an attempt by the pagan aristocracy of Rome to use the old religion of mystery and romance to confront the pro-Christian policies of Constantine. The first letter in this mintmark is the Latin letter “R”, for Rome. The next symbol is a ligature, which consists of two Greek letters epsilon and rho, and then an upward sweep which transforms the ligature into the Greek letter omega. What looks like a “C’ is actually the Greek letter sigma. The last letter is the Latin “Q’, which is the officina. The Greek cryptogram section reads epsilon rho omega sigma or Eros. The temples of Venus and Roma were also adjacent to each other in Rome.
