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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Marsyas Mike, post: 4303910, member: 85693&quot;]I like this thread - it&#039;s nice to see how everybody is doing. </p><p><br /></p><p>My bottom-feeding eBay purchases have been coming through during the coronavirus crisis - a tip of the hat to the US Postal Service. </p><p><br /></p><p>For instance, I got my first Decentius - stimulating the economy, $4.99 at a time:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1095077[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Decentius&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; Æ Centenionalis</b></p><p><b>(351-352 A.D.)</b></p><p><b>Lugdunum (Lyons) Mint</b></p><p>DN DECENTIVS NO[B CA]ES, bare-headed, cuirassed bust right / VICTORIAE DD NN AVG [ET CAE], two Victories standing with wreath with VOT V MVLT X in four lines; SP//RSLG.</p><p>RIC Lyons 137; Bastien 177.</p><p>(4.83 grams / 20 mm)</p><p><br /></p><p>I started re-reading the Albert Camus novel <i>The Plague</i>.&nbsp; How much better it is than I remember from 30 years ago! </p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists:&nbsp; they disbelieved in pestilences.&nbsp; A pestilence isn&#039;t a thing made to man&#039;s measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away.&nbsp; But it doesn&#039;t always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven&#039;t taken their precautions.&nbsp; Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible.&nbsp; They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views.&nbsp; How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views.&nbsp; They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>Albert Camus, trans. Stuart Gilbert, <i>The Plague</i> (New York:&nbsp; Alfred A. Knopf, 1960 (11th printing)), p. 35[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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