Ancient Idiots: Ask the Experts Anything....

Discussion in 'Ancient Coins' started by Clavdivs, May 25, 2020.

  1. Nathan B.

    Nathan B. Well-Known Member

    Thank you, Sulla80. Yes, Archive.org does have many titles, but not the most useful or current ones. I clicked on the link you kindly provided, and randomly came across this quote:

    "It must be remembered that the entire Indo-Greek currency consisted of cast coins."

    Is this true? I thought that Indo-Greek coinage (thinking about Menander I, Strato I, Agathocleia, Zoilos I, and the rest) was struck coinage. I may be confused, though; perhaps some will call these Bactrian coins, but I normally see them termed Indo-Greek.
     
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  3. dougsmit

    dougsmit Member

    There are a very few examples of a language other than Greek on Parthian coins but it is limited to the name of the king on the top line while, in the Greek legends, he is only referred to as Arsakes. Traditional texts refer to the legends on these coins as gibberish Greek. I would not be capable of telling gibberish from a completely correct Parthian script so I can not comment on what the rest of those legends are. The ID's given below were the best I could do when I got the coins and may not reflect the latest updates in works I have not seen in languages I do not read.

    Mithradates IV
    op0290bb0409.jpg


    Osroes II
    op0330bb0802.jpg
    Osroes II
    op0335fd3326.jpg
    Vologases VI
    op0350bb0803.jpg

    I learned a lot from Sear and recommend it until someone else writes something better. I would buy all three volumes when you can. Again, not the way I would have done it but..., Sear has the AD portion of Parthian in his Greek Imperial volume but the earlier period in the Greek volume II. I hope you will also get interested in the Western Greek coins so would not regret having volume I. Sear has only a few coins from each issuing authority but covers many you will see most often.

    You may be confused but not as badly as the author of that quote.

    I like that book, too. Paul Rynearson was once one of my regular sources for coins but I do not know what happened along the way. Some dealers stopped sending lists; some started selling online; some got out of the business. I never kept up.

    Sell things you consider worthless and that you will never again want. I made a mistake selling my BMCRE volume V for $10 when I sold my coins in 1974 to finance my wife quitting work for the birth of our daughter. I would have been better off eating less and keeping those items.

    I also suggest you become familiar with the site on Asian coins by the late Tom Mallon. When he died the idea of free information on the coins he loved to a giant step back. We owe great thanks to the people who keep his site from being a dead link even if it will never be updated.
    http://grifterrec.rasmir.com/coins.html
     
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  4. Nathan B.

    Nathan B. Well-Known Member

    I like your sense of humour! Now I feel better about that particular matter, and will safely ignore the rest of that book.

    I also appreciate your advice on selling things. Over the last two decades, I have regularly sold coins, books, and even chess sets to fund other purchases. I do very much miss some of the coins I've sold, but overall, I always somehow enjoy the painful process of deciding which treasures to part with in order to buy something I really want. The problem is that if I had known what I wanted in the beginning, I could have saved myself a lot of money.

    Anyway, I am going to take your advice and try to sell enough things to get myself the three-volume Sear set you mentioned, and I will definitely check out the website you mentioned also.

    And now I will say no more, because I think I have monopolized this threat enough. But I am very grateful to you and Roman Collector and Sulla80 for your help and kindness; soon, on another day, in probably another thread, I'll be back! :)
     
  5. NewStyleKing

    NewStyleKing Beware of Greeks bearing wreaths

    Isn't there books on Bactria and coinage by Frank Holt like Thundering Zeus?
     
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  6. cmezner

    cmezner do ut des Supporter

    Thank you so much Sulla80 for reading my question and replying :)

    Since I asked a while ago about it in the The Roman Empire Begins thread, didn't want to duplicate the question:shy:.
    At that time I had a different scale, got a 3-digit accuracy scale that is why the weight is not the same as in the original post.

    Æ16 Trichalkon,
    Phrygia, Conventus of Apamea or Synnada, Eucarpia, 27 BC - 14 AD

    15 x 16 mm, 7.370 g
    Ref.: RPC 3159; AMC 1382, SNG Cop. 367; SNG von Aulock 8363;

    Ob.: ΣΕΒΑΣΤΟΣ laureate head right; Lituus below chin
    Rev.: EYKAPΠITIKOY - ΛYKIΔAΣ EVΞENOY Goddess Cybele standing facing, raising right arm and raising hem of robe with left; (Lykidas Euxenou, magistrate)

    upload_2020-6-7_12-29-26.png upload_2020-6-7_12-29-41.png
     
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  7. Nathan B.

    Nathan B. Well-Known Member

    Thank you for the recommendation, NewStyleKing. That looks to be an excellent book for me to read and study.
     
  8. hotwheelsearl

    hotwheelsearl Well-Known Member

    I know that some good quality silver and gold coins circulated outside the Empire, especially in the near east, probably for their metal content only.

    My question is, are there any accounts of standard bronze coins circulating outside Rome?

    On a side note, what is the latest evidence of a RI coin being used in commerce after the fall of the Empire?
     
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  9. Sulla80

    Sulla80 Well-Known Member

    An interesting coin - yours heavier and smaller than 22 other examples of RPC 3159. While I would not have confidence in calling this a trichalkon, I am curious to hear what others more expert in Roman provincials would say. (FYI: B.V.Head Phrygia)
     
    Last edited: Jun 7, 2020
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  10. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

    Technically, it's not a 3-volume set. Sear's Ancient Greek Coins catalogue is in two volumes issued in 1978 and 1979 (I: Europe, and II: Asia and Africa), and his catalogue on Greek Imperial Coins (which are now generally called Roman Provincial coins) was published as a stand-alone volume in or about 1982. I own all three -- purchased second-hand and relatively cheaply on Amazon and/or Abebooks -- and find them quite useful and informative for basic information on subjects about which I knew essentially nothing until quite recently. Although of course there are online resources that are far more comprehensive.
     
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  11. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

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  12. cmezner

    cmezner do ut des Supporter

    Right, it is the measurements that don't fit... :confused:
     
  13. Sulla80

    Sulla80 Well-Known Member

    Somewhat - it raises more questions for me than I have answers: were there multiple denominations or was this variability one denomination “local bronze”? For me, not enough known to be that specific (tri-).
     
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  14. Roman Collector

    Roman Collector Well-Known Member

    I successfully passed off a Constantius II AE4 as a penny at the grocery store.
     
  15. eparch

    eparch Well-Known Member

    @Nathan B.

    Volume 12 of HGC Handbook of Greek Coins) covers
    Bactria and Ancient India
     
  16. Nathan B.

    Nathan B. Well-Known Member

    Thank you, DonnaML and eparch!

    DonnaML, I am interested in the *2 volume set* plus the standalone volume by David Sear. ;-) I also appreciate the emphasis of Dougsmit's recommendation of the Melville-Jones dictionary. I think I will have to get that at some point.

    eparch, I appreciate the note. That looks to be an excellent resource for me. I will try to buy one in the future.
     
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  17. cmezner

    cmezner do ut des Supporter

    Should I call it just AE16?
     
  18. Ignoramus Maximus

    Ignoramus Maximus Nomen non est omen.

    Really? Nice sense of humour!
    I would love to see the tellers face when he discovered a Roman coin in his register when he shut shop that evening:)

    Though it's throwing good money after bad money in my opinion...
     
  19. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

    @hotwheelsearl, in response to your question, what looks like a very interesting article, as translated into English, entitled "Circulation of Roman Coinage in Northern Europe in Late Antiquity," can be found at at https://journals.openedition.org/histoiremesure/886. A brief excerpt:

    "In North-Central Europe 2nd century denarii and subaerati are noted almost always in Late Roman and Early Migration Period contexts, i.e. be-tween A.D. 3rd and the 5th century. Most of the denarii hoards, which additionally contain non-numismatic elements, mainly ornaments, are dated to the Migration Period; many deposits from Gotland are recorded even in Late Migration Period contexts. Denarii continue to appear also in Frankish graves dated to 5th and 6th centuries and even later. Strong wear of the denarii from Barbaricum suggests that they were used over a long period.

    The other very important group of Roman coinage in Barbaricum are 2nd and early 3rd century sestertii found particularly on the south-eastern Baltic — in Pomerania, Sambian peninsula and the lower Neman River, areas settled by Germanic and West Balt societies. Sestertii are registered in hoards, graves, and as stray finds. In my opinion the influx of the wave of sestertii to the Baltic coast ought to be dated to the period between A.D. 180 and the mid 3rd century, until early Valerianus and Gallienus. There is evidence that they originated from the western Empire and the latest series, dated to the mid-3rd century, may have come directly from northern Italy. The distribution, chronology and provenance of this very specific group of coinage strongly suggest its links with the amber trade which, as a result of Marcomanic Wars, had to take place by a roundabout sea route."

    See also http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/87152/1/WP275.pdf at p. 7: "There is some evidence that late Roman low-denomination coins were still circulating in the
    fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as were privately produced jettons (Dyer, 1997, p. 40)."

    Finally, see the thread at forumancientcoins.com entitled "How long were Roman coin in circulation for?"; it's at http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=108861.0;wap2. One comment cites an article mentioning Roman bronzes from a hoard circulating (on a small scale) as farthings in 1741; see https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3421958&view=1up&seq=548. Another comment, by a Forum member named Gallienus1, states:

    "With the collapse of the Western Empire the new coins minted by the tribal successor states probably could not be produced in the numbers needed for trade, pay for the loyalty of warriors or even for every day exchange. It is therefore reasonable to expect that Roman coins that survived in circulation would be used until worn into featureless discs, then melted down for reuse.

    Then the[re] are hoard coins. Hoards have been found from the time they were hidden to the present day. Reading an excerpt from The Social Circulation of the Past: English Historical Culture 1500-1730 by Daniel Woolf indicates to me that hoards were discovered at a much greater frequency in the past than they are today. In the 15th through to 18th centuries some of these coins must have re-entered the economy as unofficial units of exchange based on the monetary value of their metal content.

    Names given for Roman coins such as 'madning money', 'Binchester pennies' and 'Burrough money' certainly suggest that the locals at least may have used them as a means of exchange. The part in the excerpt that makes me weep is the schoolmaster who gets his students to look for Roman coins and when they found enough silver ones he had them melted down to make a silver tankard!" (Citing https://books.google.com.au/books?id=5fb2qsnZozMC&pg=PA233&lpg=PA233&dq=circulation+of+<a href='http://www.forumancientcoins.com/catalog/roman-and-greek-coins.asp?vpar=55&pos=0' target='_blank'>roman</a>+coins&source=bl&ots=eCC8e-HzIS&sig=IGt_9KA2bw0GKhI7GE9JFVoBXPk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiZzKq62IjQAhWJHJQKHUjQBtE4KBDoAQgfMAE#v=onepage&q=circulation of roman coins&f=false .)
     
  20. Sulla80

    Sulla80 Well-Known Member

    I'd keep it simple and call it an AE or bronze coin and share metrics of 16mm and 7.37g for anyone interested. For me AE16 is not a denomination, for example: RPC 3159 the specimens listed could be AE19, AE18, AE17, AE16 given there is a lot of variety in size. However, this doesn't mean anything about how this coin might be exchanged for other coins (or goods for that matter). I'd keep it simple: "local issue AE of Eucarpia district at the time of Augustus".
     
    Last edited: Jun 8, 2020
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  21. Alegandron

    Alegandron "ΤΩΙ ΚΡΑΤΙΣΤΩΙ..." ΜΕΓΑΣ ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ, June 323 BCE

    LOL, I was going to do that with my cruddy ones that I give away. I set the bag aside, and I need to find it again. Nice job! LOL.

    Hey, we should meet up, hit a few stores. If we are asked, I would tell them it is a Confederate Cent... :)
     
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