Ancient Idiots: Ask the Experts Anything....

So are the only officially known names “Demarius,” “sestertius,” and “as?”

 

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'QUOTE="hotwheelsearl, post: 4552756, member: 75143"]So are the only officially known names “Demarius,” “sestertius,” and “as?”[/QUOTE]

I think there are lots of other known names. I'm pretty sure that dupondius, quinarius, quadrans, and aureus are all real.

 

I propose 'Vigarius'.

My question is: Does an Otho denarius exist with complete legends on both sides(all within the flan, not abutting/cutoff at the edges, or limited by a weak strike)?

Or would such an item be as scarce as hen's teeth?

 

Yes, they exist. I suspect you are seeing the result of dealers advertising all the Otho coins they get because there is a market for even the bad ones while more common rulers won't show up in high to mid-lever sales, There are denarii of the common rulers worth $10 but dealers don't stock them because more people want the $20 to $200 ones. Poor Othos will sell to people who want a space filler so you see them offered more than similar Trajans etc.

https://www.cngcoins.com/Search.asp..._TYPE_ID=3&VIEW_TYPE=0&MAX_COUNT=10000&PAGE=1

Scroll through the above lots. Watch for one coin at $11000. Find several at $5000. Not all are perfect but decent. Are these the best coins? Probably many of the finest are sold privately to collectors who do not ask the price. This one was marked as sold by Ed Waddell who tends to have nice coins for what I would say was a reasonable price. I'm sure you will find better ones if you do the research.


55504
Otho, 69 A.D. ex: Tkalec
AR Denarius, 3.49g. 18mm. IMP M OTHO CAESAR AVG TR P. Bare head of Otho to right. Rev. SECVRITAS P R. Securitas standing to left holding wreath and scepter. RIC 8. BMC 17. BN 10. Fine style and light iridescent toning.

Ex: NAC, Zurich, Auction 10. April 9, 1997, lot 594.
Ex: Tkalec, Zurich, Auction, February 19, 2001, lot 263.
Ex: Classical Numismatic Review, Summer, 2001, lot 93.
about Extremely Fine $6,750.00 Sold

 

Does this count?

 

As a newbie to ancient coins and also Coin Talk, I have questions! I'll ask 5, and ask that whoever feels like answering, even if it's only one question or a part of one question, to please contribute.

1. Why are Celtic coins that do not have Greek script considered part of the "Ancient Greek coins" area of numismatics? Also, is this all Celtic coins, or only some? I have the same questions for Jewish coins--especially for coins from the two rebellions against Rome. I have this question also for coins of the Indo-Scythians and the Hephthalites.

2. Why did Parthia use Greek script on their coins? (I'm guessing it's because of the spread of Greek under Alexander the Great, but I hope that whoever answers might be able to explain things a bit more.)

3. Why do the introductory resources for ancient Greek coinage introduce so well obols, drachms, and so on, in terms of their worth relative to each other, but nevertheless leave common terms like stater and litra basically undefined?

4. Why are some modern numismatic publications printed in such small runs, and not reprinted? I'm thinking of John Mellville-Jones Testimonia Numaria (2 vols), and also "Greek Coins and their Values: Vol. 1"--the newest edition, edited by Italo Vecchi.

5. If I am interested in Indo-Greek coins, but do not have access to the extraordinarily expensive Mitchener or Bopearachchi catalogues, should I give up and go home, or are there other, more affordable catalogues that cover these coins?

Thanks to anyone who is able to help me with these questions!

 

There is an unfortunate tendency for many people to classify things in a simplistic manner. Many things that get lumped into 'Greek' got there mostly because they were not Roman. The wonderful books by David Sear Greek Coins and their Values did this and people bought that system along with the books. While I see no sense in it, beginners like me benefited greatly from the few "not so Greek" coins shown in Sear so I am glad he included them.

 

Through many periods of history there has been one language that dominated. Today it is English and many people whose primary language is not English desire to learn English as a second language. In the time of the coins we collect, that language was Greek. I'll throw your question back at you: Why do US coins have Latin mottos even after most schools are dropping Latin? Did the average Parthian read Greek? Probably not but the people then who read anything were as likely to read Greek as anything. Many Parthian coins butcher the Greek so badly that I would guess the main reason for the legends is that was the way it had always been done and change is slow.

 

I have not noticed this but I might have read different books along the way. Many words we use for coins translate to mean little more than "coin". Litra bothers me in particular since we seem to prefer to use obol for coins that size wherever they were made. Were the large silver coins of ancient Syracuse thought of as tetradrachms by the people who used them or were they 20 litra pieces in their minds? We do not know many things and collectors hate to say they don't know everything almost as much as do scholars who are paid to be smarter than the rest of us. The best but not very good answer for some of these things is "because we always have done it that way." You can't change it but you can learn, understand and communicate using the lingo. Language is a matter of communication. People who spend all their time correcting the grammar of others can easily miss the point of what was being said.

I got a lot of good out of these books by Jones:
https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-A...ctionary+of+greek+coins&qid=1591528612&sr=8-2

https://www.amazon.com/John-M-Jones...ctionary+of+roman+coins&qid=1591528722&sr=8-2

 

Book publishers are in business to sell books. When you put out a book and have trouble selling the last 75% of the ones you made, you are understandably slow to make another batch. I have known more that one author who had boxes of his book in his basement even after some were being sold used for more than he had asked. Perhaps this situation will improve with modern 'print on demand' technology but the easiest way to make money on something is to sell what you have and go away while you are ahead. The easiest way to lose more is to make a thousand, sell a hundred and pay for a storage unit to stash the other 900.

 

It is easier to go away. I was given Mitchiner using my 'Geopoints' accumulated when my website hosted by Geocities went under and Yahoo stopped that reward period telling us we had to buy something with our credits. I have enjoyed the book but much in it is dated information and probably not worth the cash price even 20 years ago.

There is another matter here. I know a collector (a lot smarter than I am) who learned Bulgarian so she could read the books coming out of that country following the opening of the former Soviet bloc countries. I might not feel like such loser at Chinese coins if I were able to read Chinese. Are there other books? Maybe. Can you read them? Maybe not. I am a typical ugly American who feels little drive to learn the 20+ languages needed to be an entry level world citizen in 2020. In school, I took Latin, Greek, and Russian. Today I have a faltering command of English and read enough of a few other languages to read my coins.

https://www.vcoins.com/en/stores/an...he_roman_empire_vols_iiii/393171/Default.aspx
The link above shows a set of the three Varbanov catalogs that sold for less than 1/3 the going rate for a single volume in the English version. I should have learned Bulgarian.

 

Bringing this question back to the surface - a little more context is could help to answer the question - where is your AE of Augustus from? (provincial? imperial? celtiberian?)

 

Not as informative or comprehensive as the standard works, but I find this website helpful.

 

There is quite a bit of good information available for free or modest cost that can be a start. @Roman Collector's example a good one. Also if your interest is narrower, there are more specialized resources available e.g. this document is a great resource for learning how to read the coins of the western kshatrapas. ANS Digital LIbrary resources e.g. Pre-Mohammedan Coinage of Northwestern India. Archive.org can also be a useful source for free information, e.g. Indo-Greek Coins. Caveats: worth noting the dates when online resources were written or updated, as they can also be very far out of date, but equally you can often find peer-reviewed articles that are more up-to-date than most books.

 

Understood. Thank you for answering! I agree with you: I don't see the sense in it either, but it's nice to have the extra information about other interesting fields.

 

Thank you, Doug. I remember that when the Achaemenids conquered and administered the western part of their empire when it was young, the lingua franca of the day was, believe it or not, Aramaic. My knowledge of the ancient Near East lessens greatly after this time, and I don't know enough about the Achaemenids anyway.

I guess I'm surprised that the Parthians didn't use their own writing system; I would have thought they would have been happy to have not used Greek, but I guess this was less like a revolution and more like gradual development.

So if American and Canadian coins use Latin when virtually nobody knows it, and if the Achaeminids used Aramaic, then I guess the Parthians using Greek kind of fits the pattern.

 

Thank you again, Doug. That is a fascinating point about tetradrachms from Syracuse. I also appreciate your point about our lack of knowledge about this period.

I'm not quite sure where the grammar correction point comes in (I don't believe I've done anything like that), but I have been genuinely trying to understand what a stater is.

In Klawans, he has a very lovely section about the obols and drachms and so on, but doesn't bring stater into it, except when he briefly mentions gold. Klawans was the first book I read on ancient coins, largely because it was extremely affordable.

Late last night, I finished reading my second book on ancient coins: Collecting Ancient Greek Coins: a Guided Tour Featuring 25 Significant Types, by Paul Rynearson. (Other beginners: despite a few faults, this is a great book and an absolutely wonderful resource!) He has a section regarding obols and drachms and so on, and again, stater doesn't fit into it, but I noticed that he routinely used the word stater throughout the book. I had been trying to figure out how a stater related to a drachm. Eventually, I found in his glossary that the word stater is a general word that numismatists use when they don't know what else to call a standard coin!

Anyway, thank you again for your help and comments; I'm grateful to be able to ask questions and receive your (and others') answers.

 

Yes, I do understand. But when I see the high prices that so many books are being advertised at (I know they're not necessarily selling at such prices), it does seem like there is a real supply problem, even in terms of used books.

A while ago, I was desperately trying to hunt down a copy of volume 1 of the Testimonia Numaria. There was not even one single copy being sold, at any price, in any condition, at the time, anywhere in the world, though there were a few copies of volume 2. (There is one vol. 1 right now that I can see, but it's too expensive for me at the moment.)

To me it looks like there is still demand for these kinds of high quality, standard reference tools, and I really wish that the publishers would do as you have suggested and "print on demand," or even print small runs again. Alternatively, they could sell the books as e-books. That would not involve any cost for shipping and storage, and they could sell the e-book as many times as they liked without losing anything in the process.

In short, without their customers, the book publishers would not exist, but I don't feel they are really taking care of us when they could easily do so while helping their bottom line in the process.

 

When I read your first sentence, I laughed! The only problem is that I do not want to go away! I really do very much want to learn about Indo-Greek and Bactrian coins.

I very much appreciate the heads up about some of this information being quite dated, in case I was tempted to try to sell some of my existing books to pay for new acquisitions.

So if I plan not to go away, then I still want to learn about the kinds of coins that were made. Can I ask if there much information on Indo-Greek coins in David Sear's Greek Coins and their Values (vol. 2)? Would you recommend it as a good buy for me?

By the way, thank you very much for taking the time to answer all the questions I posted earlier; I very much appreciate it

 

That is a wonderful website, Roman Collector! I had actually discovered it before, and I really enjoy learning from it. My problem is that I do not know how comprehensive it is. I do continue to use it, though. I must also admit to liking the colour scheme and layout very much.