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Message:: [QUOTE="jamesicus, post: 3636844, member: 14873"]Congratulations on starting off collecting these coins [USER=100136]@thejewk[/USER] - in my opinion you have made a good choice and are already assembling a well documented and arranged selection. And of course the coinage of Trajan is particularly noteworthy because of the inscriptional letterforms employed by period engravers in the often very long legends on his coins. Following is an exemplar rendered by me of the CAPITALIS MONUMENTALIS letterforms employed by stone cutters for edifices, monuments, tombstones, etc. A particularly fine extant example is found on Trajan's column in Rome and the essential constructs of these letterforms are the models for all Majuscule (Capital) alphabets used in the western world. Stone cutters in particular still employ their distinctive proportions and terminating serifs. It should be noted that only twenty letters were normally used in the ancient Roman alphabet : A B C D E F G H I L M N O P Q R S T V X. Our modern J and U were not used, their equivalents being I and Vrespectively. Thus, our modern JULIUS was written IVLIVS. The letter K was seldom used and then only before A. The letters Y and Z were only used when reproducing Greek words. W was not part of the ancient Roman alphabet at all. It was Medieval scribes who eventually formalized the construction models for the letters J K U W Y Z. Capitalis Monumentalis lettering is at the apex of the "Hierarchy of Scripts" for Calligraphers and is often used by them for headers or versals in pen and ink renditions. <img src="https://jp29.org/cal235s.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /> <img src="https://jp29.org/cal75.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /> There are numerous excellent photographs of actual CAPITALIS MONUMENTALIS lettering (including that on Trajan's column) mostly accompanied by location information, translations and analyses, at <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Inscriptions/home.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Inscriptions/home.html" rel="nofollow">Bill Thayer's Latin Inscriptions section of his LacusCurtius web site</a> <img src="https://jp29.org/000trajan.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" />RIC Vol. II, TRAJAN, SESTERTIUS, Rome, No. 534, 98-117AD, (35mm, 22.6gm)Obverse depiction: Trajan, head facing right, wearing aegisInscription: IMP CAES NERVAE TRIANO AVG GER DAC PM TRP COS V PPReverse depiction: Trajan galloping on horseback spearing a fallen Dacian soldierInscription: SPQR OPTIMO PRINCIPI - in exergue S C[/QUOTE]

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