Silver denarius Please help

Discussion in 'Ancient Coins' started by Treashunt, Aug 19, 2019.

  1. dougsmit

    dougsmit Member

    http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/abb.html
    Years ago I posted a page expanding many common abbreviations found on Roman coins. Several appear on this Trajan. This coin is a little unusual since the name of the emperor appears in the Latin dative case (TRAIANO = dedicated to Trajan) rather than the more usual nominative (TRAIANVS = I am Trajan). My list is not all inclusive but memorizing what is there will make a lot of legends easier to understand. If you remove all of these abbreviations from a legend jumble, what remains tends to be the name of the ruler. To make things harder, often parts of the name are also abbreviated usually including the first parts rather than the most important name. Some of Trajan's earlier coins had NER short for Nerva (his predecessor and adoptive father. Many rulers were named Marcus Aurelius but used M A or M AVR before their distinctive name. Again, learning to separate the parts of a legend that are less important can be a valuable skill. After a while, all this becomes second nature and you wonder why it was once confusing.
     
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  3. Treashunt

    Treashunt The Other Frank

    Gee, this is an amazing area to collect.

    And I have enough problem with English.

    :)
     
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