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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Ignoramus Maximus, post: 8329234, member: 104741&quot;]That&#039;s a nice example of an FTR, [USER=118780]@kirispupis[/USER]. </p><p><br /></p><p>This EL trachy below is pretty far outside my usual hunting ground, but I wanted one Byzantine coin in my collection. They are not rare, and esthetically, you get a lot of coin for an affordable sum. I&#039;m not usually a big fan of gold, but the warm hues of this electrum somehow won me over.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1476280[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>Its iconography takes some studying, and many of its wonders probably still escape me. But, if nothing else, it has taught me what an akakia is. Ever since I read Gogol&#039;s novella &#039;The Overcoat&#039; I had always wondered why the story&#039;s protagonist had such an outlandishly funny and strange name, Akakij Akakievitsj.&nbsp; I often wondered if there was a meaning behind it. Forty years later this Byzantine coin gave me the serendipitous answer to that question! An akakia, as it turns out, is a ceremonious roll held by the emperor and filled with dust to symbolize the mortal nature of all men. A memento mori of sorts. To a 19th-century Russian, being orthodox, its meaning probably would have been obvious. To me, an uninitiated 20th-century West-European reader, (and probably to most of us), it just sounded weird and funny.</p><p><br /></p><p>So it turns out that studying Byzantine coins can help you understand the speaking names of 19th-century Russian literature.<img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /> Fitting for &#039;And Now for Something Completely Different&#039;.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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