Featured A Beautiful Gold Stater... of Brutus?

Playing with this monogram is so fun! Here's another thought. If Rho and Upsilon are correct, why is the Upsilon attached where it is? Perhaps there is a B buried in there and that's why the Upsilon is attached there-- to form the lower bout of the B.

BRY? RBY?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Good point. I think some of the historic confusion on these is the fact that illustrations of the coin type in the age before photographs seem to have rendered the monogram just as you have drawn it and not like it really appears on the coins. For example.

This is the illustration in BMC


This is the full quotation from Head in Historia Numorum in 1911.

 

Well, the cats out the bag. It's all true. I was the 61st conspirator. After fleeing Rome I may have sort of minted some golden coins for Brutus.
Awkward

Oh, I can always solve for pie


And first things last, INCREDIBLE coin The great(ish) one!
One of the type is on my bucket list
Here's my coin of the guy who started it all, Julius Caesar from 44 BCE:

 

Fascinating stuff - I think the abbreviated inscription must be Greek.

The stater is on my wants list, but I do have this, ex Michael Kelly

 

@Curtisimo - beautiful coins, and thanks for the excellent overview - this type remains on my wish list to complement Brutus:

Here's the reference (annotated English translation)

Desiderius Erasmus, The correspondence of Erasmus, 1974,University of Toronto Press, vol 8 p 37, Translation of Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterdami


and in the notes


Here is the index to Berliner Munzblatter, I am not aware of a digitized copy.
Berliner Münzblätter. XXXIII. Jahrg. - No. 121 - Januar 1912.
I think the 1911 reference is that same BMB article which was published for January 1912.
Bahrfeldt, M. (1911), ‘Über die Goldmünzen des Dakerkönigs ΚΟΣΏΝ † 725⁄29’, Berlin, Verlag der Berliner Münzblätter

 

Dear @Curtisimo!

Thank you very much for this clear and concise overview of the history of the Kosonstater and its problems.

I would like to draw your attention here to a side issue that is unfortunately too often overlooked. The Kosonstaters are more or less regularly found together with gold staters attributed to Mithridates. Doesn't this suggest that they are related to the cosonstaters?

In my collection I have a specimen of which Harlan J. Berk writes in 2004:
This is an imitation of a gold stater of Lysimachus, struck to pay the Thracian mercenaries that Brutus recruited for his fight against Octavian and Marcus Antonius.


If that is the case, then these staters should contribute to the solution of the Koson mystery!

Another question is wether this is really one of the staters found together with the Kosonstaters. Until today I have only the word of of Harlan J. Berk.

With kind regards
Jochen

 

Here's a bit more along these lines:

"In most of the known hoards the ‘Kosons’ are associated with coins of ‘Lysimach’ type, the documentary description of which is rather sketchy. Nevertheless, there is one numismatic document from the nineteenth century that contains a detailed description of such an item."
- Munteanu, Lucian. (2011). Some Remarks Concerning the Gold Coins with the Legend ‘ΚΟΣΩΝ’, in N. Holmes (ed), Proceedings of the “XIV International Numismatic Congress, Glasgow 2009”, I, Glasgow 2011, 304-309.

 

Very interesting write up @Curtisimo! Here are several of my coins of Brutus

 

I've seen those before and considered buying one once or twice but the one in the OP's post looks less gold colored than the others I've seen. Were they debased at some point?

Maybe it's just a bad picture but the one in OP's post looks like it's got a relatively high silver content.

 

Surprise, surprise, another thought-provoking post from @Curtisimo!

@TIF's great idea for the monogram makes me wonder why nobody(?) has suggested it's BYP (BUR) for Burebista? Doesn't that make a lot of sense? He was alive until 44 BCE after all; and even if KOSON names a person it could be Burebista's son. (Perhaps Burebista and his son issued some restruck from the massive amounts of gold he took from the coastal Greek cities, and then his son alone struck more from native Dacian gold, for example.)

The other thing that's burning my butt is: what about these things, struck on the same weight standard, but (if struck in the mid 1st c. BCE) based on a type from a hundred years earlier?

The same KOΣΩΝ, but now with another word in the mix: ΔΡΟΥΕΙΣ?

Some wild speculations:
- Could ΔΡΟΥΕΙΣ be an alternative form of "BΡΟΥΕΙΣ" and be the source of the monogram (now reading BPY)? (Seems doubtful. )
- Could KOΣΩΝ be a place? I see that two of the cluster of Dacian fortresses in the Orăștie Mountains (used by Burebista) have "Costești" in their names... perhaps derived from an old Dacian word? Ptolemy mentions a place called "Karsidava" which isn't too different from "Koson-dava" ("dava" apparently means "settlement", usually fortified). Maybe Kosondava was the fortress containing the mint?

Oh - and great coin btw.

 

Wow, Sev, that's an interesting one that I wasn't aware of. Rooting about for a reference to these online, I stumbled onto this website, which seems to be dedicated to the Koson issues:
http://www.koson.org/en/

I haven't look through all of it, but of this silver drachm it has this quote:

”The great surprise is the recent discovery, on the antique market, of other silver coins, imitated after the drachams Macedonia Prima type, having on reverse the club of Hercules, and on both sides the legend KOΣΩN / ΔΡOYEIΣ. The name of the issuer has been written to indicate the father: “Coson, of Droueis” (the name of the father without the genitive form). From this might come the conclusion that this dynast was not the direct descendent from king Burebista.”
- Constantin C. Petolescu, Dacia. Un mileniu de istorie, 2nd edition, Bucharest, pp. 99-100.

Elsewhere, there is this study of Koson issues, which hypothesizes that Koson and Droueis were separate "beneficiaries" of this particular type, with Droueis being "probably" a Thracian king, who eventually "disappeared at least from the agreement, possibly even physically."

Edited to add:
There also seems to be a talk given by Wolfgang Fischer-Bossert, The Drachms of King Koson of Thrace and the Meaning of the Word ΔΡΟΥΕΙΣ, where he apparently "argues that the word can be understood as the Celtic title "druid." and show many examples of coinage to support his theory." I haven't found a working link to the talk unfortunately.

 

There has been some amazing discussion on this thread and it has taken me a day or so of thinking on it to process it. Thank you everyone!

I figured I would make another diagram to cover some of the possibilities that have been discussed so far in regard to the monogram and the use of Greek letters.


I went to Wildwinds and looked through all of the cities along the west coast of the Black Sea to see if I could find the use of this specific monogram as a mintmark or control mark. No luck on an exact match but I did note that most of the cities used a variety of monograms on their coins. I am not an expert but I assume that the monograms are the initials of mint officials? Any experts feel free to chime in.

• Olbia – ΟΛBIA – Monograms used
  • https://www.wildwinds.com/coins/greece/sarmatia/olbia/t.html
• Tyra – ΤΥΡΑ – Monograms used
  • https://www.wildwinds.com/coins/greece/sarmatia/tyra/t.html
• Istros – ΙΣΤΡΙΗ – Monograms used
  • https://www.wildwinds.com/coins/greece/thrace/istros/t.html
• Tomis – TOMI – Used at least one monogram that I could find on a 1st-2nd century BC bronze coin.
  • https://www.wildwinds.com/coins/greece/thrace/tomis/t.html
• Kallatis – KAΛΛATIA – Struck coins using monograms.
  • https://www.wildwinds.com/coins/greece/thrace/kallatis/t.html
• Odessos – ΟΔΗΣΙΤΩΝ – Multiple examples of monograms used on the coins
  • https://www.wildwinds.com/coins/greece/thrace/odessos/t.html
• Messembria - MEΣΑΜΒΡΙΑΝWΝ
  • https://www.wildwinds.com/coins/greece/thrace/mesembria/t.html
• Apollonia – AΠΟΛΛΩΝΙΑΤΩΝ – Multiple examples of monograms used on the coins
  • https://www.wildwinds.com/coins/greece/thrace/mesembria/t.html
• Dionysopolis – ΔΙΟΝΥCΟΠΟΛΙΤ – Monograms used on some coins
  • https://www.wildwinds.com/coins/greece/moesia/dionysopolis/t.html

I also noted that many of these cities struck gold staters for Mithridates IV that contain monograms with Greek letters. That means that any of these cities would have been more than capable or producing the Koson staters.

Fascinating! Is the thought that Thracians struck these with gold provided by Brutus or is the suggestion that Brutus struck the imitations? Imitations of staters of Mithridates IV would seem very relevant to the discussion. The central question seems to be whether the Koson staters are imitations in the same sense as your example or whether the pure gold monogram Koson's were issued by Brutus (or some other authority).

It would be interesting to see a gold analysis of these imitations like your example to know if they were struck with the same refined gold as the monogram Kosons or the natural gold of the non-monogram Kosons.

Thanks for sharing!

Incredibly fascinating! I was not aware that there were other KΟΣΩΝ coins that were imitative of other types. I don't want to speculate too boldly here but it seems to me that the existence of this coin makes the "of the Consol" reading of KΟΣΩΝ unlikely. There is no connection to the type this coin is copying and a consol.

That also seems to suggest that Koson is a name or a place. The translation of the coin description you link to says.

"Here Koson imitates the tetradrachms of the Roman province of Macedonia. The addition 'Droueis' refers to the tribal affiliation of the Koson."​

The coin listing assumes that Koson is a Skythian king and the "Droueis" is his tribe. I wonder where they get this conclusion? I will have to do some searching and see if there are any known names of Skythian tribes that would match this.

Koson as a place is something I haven't considered... interesting.

 

That is such a beautiful example! Thank you for sharing.

This is extremely helpful @Sulla80 ! Thank you for taking the time to find this referenced, my friend. I have updated my OP and used your post as the reference.

Your help is much appreciated.

This is also quite helpful! Thank you once again.

Beautiful coins @jdmKY !

All of the Koson staters with monogram are struck with high purity gold. I am sorry the photo doesn't meet with your approval.

 

I wasn't saying that the photo doesn't meet my approval or trying to insult the quality of the photo.

I'm just saying that for some reason the one in the picture looks a lot lighter than the other ones I've seen and that I'm not sure if it's just the photo or if the coin actually looks lighter in person too.

 

Great writeup and very interesting thread!

Just my two cents:

• I doubt the theory that Brutus had coins made in order to pay Dacian warriors, who by and large came from a non-monetary society. Once they had received the coins, they would have turned them into jewellery or other decorations with remaining pieces scattered all over the place.
• I suspect that these coins were made in one or more of the great trading centres (Olbia, Appolonia) at the Black Sea, who based the design of their gold staters on Roman denari and Greek statere.
• I think it is possible that the word KOSON had no particular meaning. It may have been copied mechanistically from Greek coins, just as CONOB would be copied meaninglessly in late antiquity.
• I like the suggestion that the monogram stands for Burebista, who had conquered Greek cities on the Black Sea, but I guess this will remain an open question.
• I think it is likely that these cities made the coins to pay tribute to the Dacian king. Hence, they remained in the royal treasury, which would explain why these coins seem to come from only a few (or one?) large hoards.

 

Sorry if my first comment came across as rude or condescending.

That wasn't my intent I promise. I was just exhausted at the time and left a brief comment because I noticed that the metal looked different from the ones I've seen but I wasn't sure if it was the photo making it look different or not.

That's all I was trying to say. Again I apologize if it came across negatively.

 

If you enter "Koson stater" in acsearch, you get over 1000 hits. These coins are amazingly common. These statere must be among the most common coins of that period.

 

More intriguing findings:

It turns out that the horseshoe of fortresses in the Orăștie mountains were placed so as to defend a major Dacian valley settlement dating back possibly even to the bronze age, made wealthy by its rich salt mines. The existence of this settlement (as opposed to its Roman replacement 5km away) was unknown until the second half of the 20th century, and only in the last couple of decades have excavations revealed how truly important it was.

Guess what the name of this settlement was? Buridava.

Some other interesting points:
- The name is derived from the Dacian tribe in the area, the Boers, and it's thought that Burebista's name is not coincidentally related.
- Pottery has been found in the area marked BUR in Latin, there are also inscriptions in Greek.
- It had a rich tradition of metal working, including silver and gold (see the page by the original lead archaeologist, Dumitru Berciu, linked above ["Buridava"].)
- The original discovery of the settlement occurred in a village called Cosota, in the Cosota Valley. (Related to KΟΣΩΝ?)
- The inscription BASILEO THIAMARCOS EPOIEI , the name of the local king , was found on a clay vase. (Could EPOIEI be related to ΔΡΟΥΕΙΣ in some way?)
- Plenty of Republican coins dating from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century BCE have been found at the site. (Also Imperial coins.)

I'm increasingly convinced that Buridava-Burebista-Boer are linked to the monogram and that it should be read BYP. The huge hoards found, both of these staters as well as gold and silver looted from Greek cities, would be explained if they were buried during the massive political upheaval following Burebista's death.

Agreed!

Wow, that would be very cool if true!

 

If you don't mind translating from German...
WOLFGANG FISCHER-BOSSERT, ΚΟΣΩΝ ΔΡΟΥΕΙΣ (pages 87-103)

 

Very intriguing indeed!

This is shaping up to be Thread of the Year-- so many new ideas for this old mystery!