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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;jamesicus, post: 7307130, member: 14873&quot;]I <font face="Times New Roman">have always admired the letterforms employed by the artisan engravers of Imperial Rome on monuments, tombstones, edifices - and coins:</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman"><img src="https://www.cointalk.com/attachments/291e4197-d25d-42ba-9f86-137fd52d610d-jpeg.1129542/" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman">I particularly admire the Inscriptional lettering on the sestertii of the Julio-Claudian Emperors - especially those of Caius (Caligula), Claudius and Nero. The large flans permit elegant letter formation and, in my opinion, the die engravers of that period were especially skilled in rendering very elegant lettering. I eagerly seek out sestertii that have clear and complete inscriptions.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman"><img src="https://www.cointalk.com/attachments/d7ffcb22-f30f-44b2-9718-e53d23e2f075-jpeg.1129543/" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman">Roman Imperial coin inscriptional letterforms are based on those of CAPITALIS MONUMENTALIS employed by stone cutters for edifices, monuments, tombstones, etc. A fine extant example is found on Trajan&#039;s column in Rome and the essential constructs of these letterforms are the models for all Majuscule (Capital) alphabets used in the western world. Stone cutters in particular still employ their distinctive proportions and terminating serifs.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman">It should be noted that only twenty letters were normally used in the ancient Roman alphabet: A B C D E F G H I L M N O P Q R S T V X. Our modern J and U were not used, their equivalents being I and V respectively. Thus, our modern JULIUS was written IVLIVS. The letter K was seldom used and then only before A. The letters Y and Z were only used when reproducing Greek words. W was not part of the ancient Roman alphabet at all. It was Medieval scribes who formalized the construction models for the letters J K U W Y Z.There are numerous photographs of actual CAPITALIS MONUMENTALIS lettering (including that on Trajan&#039;s column) at:</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></p><p><a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Inscriptions/home.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Inscriptions/home.html" rel="nofollow"><font face="Times New Roman">Bill Thayer&#039;s Latin Inscriptions section of his LacusCurtius web site</font></a>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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