A history professor wrote about a parallel between ancient Rome and now. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/15/...tory&variant=1_bandit-all-surfaces_daysback_4 Here is a related coin: Commodus, 177-192 as Hercules, with lion-skin headdress. Denarius. 19-17 mm. L AEL AVREL COMM AVG P FEL HERCVLI ROMANO AVG bow, club, and quiver RIC 253, struck 191 at Rome.
I can highly recommend Kyle Harper's (the author of the NYT articles) pre-Covid book "The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease and the End of Empire". It is an extremely well researched and detailed examination of the climate during the Roman era, the spread of disease, and the link between the two. SC
Stunning coins, and a remarkable article. ...Yeah, the parallels. My opinion of Pertinax has been elevated several notches!
Thank you for sharing that article! Perhaps now I can expand my "plague" collection, which so far has focused only on the dated coins of Justinian. I consider the "Justinian Plague Coinage" to include coins struck in Years 14 (540/541) and 15 (541/542) especially, but also 16 and on. The plague hit Constantinople in Year 15, and infected Justinian himself (he survived & bore facial scars for life). It is always surprising to me that the Justinian's mints appear not to have any major disruption of production. Dated coinage from Years 14-16 is quite plentiful across the mints, at least from Nicomedia, Theoupolis (Antioch), Constantinople and Carthage. (Cyzicus may just be less common in general, but I don't recall seeing any RY 15's from there.) My Year 14 Justinian Plague Follis from Constantinople is actually a year early being from the mint at the capital (RY 15 is next on my list), but plague had already reached Byzantine N. Africa in Year 14, particularly in Egypt. My Year "XIIII" Nummus from Carthage, below, is the auction house photo, since I have not yet photographed it. This one has actually appeared on CoinTalk before, but from a different owner, CT member @TheRed ... Justinian I “The Great” (527 – 565) AE Follis (23.8g, 39mm). Constantinople, 1 Aug 540 – 31 Jul 541 (regnal year 14). Obv: D N IVSTINIANVS P P AVI. Diademed, helmeted & cuirassed bust facing, holding globus cruciger in r. hand & shield over l. shoulder decorated w/ equestrian motif; in field to r., cross. Rev: Large M, ANNO – X/II/II to either side. Cross above. A below. CON in exergue. References: SB 163; DOC 39a. Pedigree: Ex-Ancient & Medieval Coins Canada Auction 2, Lot 274 (Toronto, 9 November 2019); Ex-“TheRed” Collection; Ex-FORVM Ancient Coins (n.d. Item SH36361), with tag. (Further references and more about this coin & coin-in-hand video are in a blog post I wrote about it.)
Terrific coins and blog, @Curtis. I couldn't resist looking for the old PBS documentary on the 'Justinian Plague,' from the program, 'Secrets of the Dead.' Sadly, YouTube only yielded a series of 10-minute segments. But here's a radio show, from a favorite BBC program. (...As cool of a "blog" (--this: Not) as you're likely to run across, with academics routinely on the panel of each program. And it's Free!) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rc43 It's worth emphasizing that the same plague affected any number of polities in the region, including, for one conspicuous instance, Aksum (/Axum). From being one of the premiere powers of late Antiquity (notably in diplomatic contact with Justinian), it rapidly declined. From the 6th century, Aksumite coins eloquently demonstrate this --along with evident Byzantine influence on the motifs (facing portraits, for one). In the Aksumite series, it's from this point that late Koine Greek legends begin to start being supplanted by ones in the native Ge'ez (effectively proto-Amharic), on a large scale. Earlier in the 5th and 6th centuries, some of them are bilingual. The expansion of Ge'ez in the legends seems to symptomize a contraction of Aksum's international engagement, both on mercantile and political levels. (...Considered apologizing for the digression, but in the present context, I doubt there was one.)
Thank you for the lead on the BBC panel... And especially for the Aksumite digression! I'm fascinated by them and had considered adding one to my "ancient African coins" sub-collection. But I'm especially excited to hear they had bilingual issues, since that's another special interest of mine. And a link to the Plague coinage... I now know what my next area of major attention will be!!
@Curtis, You're just That Cool! Best of luck expanding your horizons in this direction! ...I can only wish I had (even) .jpgs of more of the 6th-c. AEs. --Well, Wait, here's exactly one. Late enough to have full Ge'ez legends on both sides. The legends are particularly evocative of the period. Hataz, c. 570-600 (following Munro-Hay's chronology). Obv. facing crowned bust; legend: 'King Hataz.' Rev. Cross; legend: 'Mercy to the people.' Munro-Hay 141 (also, needless to say, resorting to his translations). On one important level, the cultural interplay in the series, from the original Koine legends (c. later 3rd-early 5th centuries), all the way to Byzantine motifs like this, effects a seamless continuation of the polycultural elements you find in earlier series from the same general neck of the regional woods, only most conspicuously Roman Provincial. It's a Cool series.
A fine article. The second best thing my wife ever did was marry me. The best thing she ever did was get us a subscription to the New York Times. "Retracing the role that nature played in Rome’s history reminds us that we, too, are ecologically fragile, the fate of our society only partly under our control. A sense of our fragility should not make us fatalistic. Rather, it should inspire us to be less complacent. Even with all the tools of modern biological science, we could not have predicted exactly when and where a new pandemic would emerge. But we were warned, and those warnings went unheeded, in part because we told stories about ourselves implying that we had been freed from nature, that we were immune from the patterns of the past." Here is the madman who presided over Rome during the Antonine Plague.
