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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Limes, post: 5281760, member: 101013&quot;]Here&#039;s the <a href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/nervas-policy-to-reduce-the-burderns-of-the-citizens.371913/" class="internalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/nervas-policy-to-reduce-the-burderns-of-the-citizens.371913/">second </a>little write-up of today and that&#039;s long overdue, about a really interesting sestertius of Caracalla I won at a Roma auction in October. </p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1221190[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>When drooling over the coins offered at the Roma XX auction 29/30 October, I was particularly interested in lots 642 and 643: sestertii struck by Caracalla that refer to his visit to Alexandria, in 215 AD (Did a member of this forum perhaps grab one of the two sestertii in Roma Auction XX?) Somehow, I had never seen this coin in auction before (even though it’s not extremely rare...!) and was taken by the historical event the reverse of this coin refers to. Since those two lots at the Roma auction were way out of my reach, I felt very fortunate that another type appeared in the Roma E-Sale following auction XX and I was able to grab it. Yes, obviously it&#039;s not as good looking as the other two, but I am more then happy with it!</p><p><br /></p><p>The reverse is brutal, as it refers to the massacre of the troops of Caracalla in Alexandria during a visit of the wretched emperor to the tomb of Alexander the Great. The story goes that the emperor heard that the populace of Alexandria spoke ill of him. He then marched his whole arme into the city, after notifying the citizens first to stay at home. According to the historian Cassius Dio: &quot;And, to pass over the details of the calamities that then befell the wretched city, he slaughtered so many persons that he did not even venture to say anything about their number, but wrote to the senate that it was of no interest how many of them or who had died, since all had deserved to suffer this fate.” The reverse is quite clear, leaving little to the imagination: Caracalla is dominating the crocodile whilst Isis is presenting grain ears to the emperor. How humiliating...!</p><p><br /></p><p>Share your brutal, or humiliating coins![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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