Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Trebellianus, post: 3632070, member: 91569&quot;]With ancients, &quot;the book&quot; is absolutely the general history as much as any numismatic text (if not moreso). Reading Suetonius is fairly essential — he has his failings (a strong &quot;senatorial&quot; viewpoint, his gossipy, credulous approach to the material, etc. etc.) but his remains the classic account of most of the people he covers.</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;The Twelve Caesars&quot; is a rather curious numismatic goal, I have always felt — its origin in one of the prominent Roman historical works saves it from arbitrariness but, even so, it&#039;s an assignment to collect people bound together by nothing more than that they were the persons Suetonius wrote about. The Caesars in question, taken together, are a complete spectrum of historical importance, personal qualities, general interestingness and (in their emissions) aesthetic value. It&#039;s a neat, contained goal, but I don&#039;t think it&#039;d leave one with the Roman coinage at either its most beautiful or its most remarkable.</p><p><br /></p><p>If I was giving advice to someone looking to get into ancients I think I&#039;d counsel something like — read Suetonius, read Tacitus (the thinking man&#039;s Suetonius), read modern takes on those two authors, then read about all the other emperors (down to the Severans, at the very least) and just have a think about which emperors interest you and what seems like it&#039;d be interesting to collect. I don&#039;t mean at all to be prescriptive, or to throw obstacles up, but I feel rather strongly that —as a starting point— one needs to have at least some knowledge of the historical background to be able to make informed decisions as to what they like and don&#039;t like.</p><p><br /></p><p>On the more numismatic side I&#039;d strongly recommend the introductions to the venerable Catalogue of Roman Coins in the British Museum — <a href="https://archive.org/search.php?query=coins%20of%20the%20roman%20empire%20in%20the%20british%20museum" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://archive.org/search.php?query=coins%20of%20the%20roman%20empire%20in%20the%20british%20museum" rel="nofollow">they&#039;re available for free online</a> and are a heroic attempt to put the earlier coins (down to Commodus) into their full historical and artistic context. Volume I goes down to Vitellius and Volume II covers the Flavians. I&#039;m less familiar with the Republic and the Imperators but there&#039;s (what seems to me, anyway) a good overview of Caesar&#039;s issues <a href="http://www.accla.org/actaaccla/juliuscaesar.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.accla.org/actaaccla/juliuscaesar.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Writing about the Nerva-Anthonine Dynasty was probably too politically dicey while it was on-going. There&#039;s possibly even signs of this in the biography of Domitian, which tactfully omits to give Nerva any role in Domitian&#039;s assassination. Some authorities think that S&#039;s account of Tiberius is —at least in part— a veiled, quasi-allegorical criticism of Hadrian, but explicit criticism of the ruling house was probably too dangerous.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in