Featured The Death of Constantine

Lesson learned thank you

 

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The last time I notified VCoins dealer about an error in attribution, I received a fairly passive aggressive response—so passive I’m not sure it was aggressive. The dealer commented that with all the Covid chaos, universities must be online now and I must have a lot of time on my hands. I did not present myself as a professor in my email. The dealer must have looked me up to see what kind of crackpot corrects RIC numbers. At any rate, I vowed never to do it again.

 

I really like this post of yours, Gavin. I had a similar experience to yours once, but of course I don’t have your credentials. I have become very leary/cautious about contacting others, particularly dealers, regarding possible attribution errors.

 

I often contact dealers about misattributions (vcoins listings and auction-house listings, but not eBay offerings). Sometimes they simply have the ruler wrong (e.g. Galerius called Maximian, or the wrong Leo number on a Byzantine coin.) Often it is to correct a listing with an attribution suggesting something is rarer than it actually is when I already know the type or it is close enough to my interests to look up. Often errors are because RIC is not easy to use. It is easy to get RIC numbers wrong or simply not find something in RIC when it is there in a place the reader did not look. Rarely do I suspect purposeful deception. More than half the time I get an email "Thank you" and I soon see it corrected. Most other times it is corrected but I don't get a personal response. Sometimes, but not often, the listing is not corrected. This happens most often when the coin is at auction on an auction-consolidator site and the coin closes in only a couple of days. I think they are too busy and don't have time to fix it. I hope they notify the winning bidder.

 

I take about the same approach as you - and usually have the same experiences and get about the same responses. I just exercise caution because I don’t want to create any unpleasantness. As you say, most collectors and dealers realize that your motivation is to be helpful and express their gratitude for your help. Of course, there are those who are grumpy, or are having a bad day (don’t we all!) and respond less kindly. I once had a Vcoins dealer tell me that his attribution was correct (and it might have been) and that If I wasn’t interested in buying the coin as listed I should move on and seek out another seller. But those kind of responses are few and far between. When that kind of thing happens I just “kiss it off” and remind myself that people do have bad days and that they often write things online that they would never say to people “face to face”.

 

The highlight of my 'correcting' career came years ago when a seller argued back at me claiming to have got his information from a respected web site. I went to that page and saw he had misread it. That made me feel better because it was my website he was using to argue with me.

If I correct a seller ID and they correct it, I will still buy from that seller. No correction, no reply, no sales. Errors happen.

 

I forgot to say I usually end my communications with "I hope this helps." Maybe that takes the sting out of it a bit.

 

Thanks for that, Ancient Coin Hunter. ...Does this forum Average At Least One Thread as brilliant as this Every Day? Sure seems like it. I only knew of the two commoner types.
Boswell's Life of Johnson has a cool echo of Eusebius, mentioning one Conder token with Johnson's profile.
"Let me add, as a proof of the popularity of his character, that there are copper pieces struck at Birmingham, with his head impressed on them, which pass current as half-pence there, and in the neighboring parts of the country." (Entry for '1784;' Oxford 1-vol. ed., p. 1396.)
I don't have pictures of my example, but compared to this one, you're not missing much: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1790s-half-penny-doctor-sam-johnson-453427475
I have to like how unflattering the portrait is!

 

Oh, most definitely. It always amazes me just how knowledgeable people here are. I can't scroll down half a page without finding something new to engage me. I love this place.

 

...With US ebay, the absolute nadir has to be the medievals. People have Zero idea of what they've got (there's lots of "Templar!" "Crusader!" "Cross!" "Cross!" gibberish), but that doesn't stop them from wanting three times whatever the thing is worth. At least one dealer, who was a prominent exception back in the day, finally gave up in disgust.

 

I used to do that with G&N, back when they worked together, they were always courteous in return so I thought it was worth it even if I did not end up winning the auctions. I did once or twice with Lanz too, especially on fake items. Never got any reply but most of the time the fake item was withdrawn, which is at least something. I still frequent Naumann's auctions but have long stopped frequenting Lanz.

 

Right now Constantine is sitting at the end of my Roman coin journey at the moment. I am still trying to absorb all of the military and political information around his rise to power among the "four emperors."

Here is my one modest Constantine coin, an humble Follis. I bought this one just to say I have one. After I have absorbed enough history to know what I'm doing, I'll look for a better one.



Reduced copper follis of Constantine, Obverse, IMP CONSTANTINVS P F AVG (“Emperor Constantine, dutiful and patriotic, augustus”) Reverse, SOLI INVICTO COMITI R F in field, mint mark R*P (“The unconquerable Sun-God”) Sear 16096

 

It seems a stretch to describe a coin which explicitly commemorates pagan deification as "Christian". Might the reverse be better described as Sol Invictus sending his chariot to receive the deified Constantine?

 

...But it's worth remembering that throughout the early Christian period, there was appropriation of Pagan visual language. In Egypt, the Copts used the Ankh as a variant of the cross, and in Italy, some of the early representations of Christ make him look like Apollo, ...or somebody. Maybe there's a fine line between appropriation and syncretism, but in this context, the sense I get is that it leans more toward the former.

 

The borders are blurred at this time in history. In fact, they were so blurred for so long that ideas which had been at least accepted as belonging to Christian thought like Origenism or Donatism ended up being not just discarded but socially punished in due time. The reciprocal is true also: aspects foreign to early Christian thought became part of the faith and its representation after the "liberis mentibus" of Constantine at Mediolanum and the Nicaea Council in 325. As a matter of fact some lines were so blurred, that edicts had to be given by emperors so as to separate Christians from Jews under the penalty of losing their collective religious rights if they did not follow their own priests in their own churches OR their own rabbis in their own synagogues.

 

I have little doubt that Constantine considered himself "Christian" in some sense, though I read Eusebius with appropriate caution. My doubt lies with those responsible for Constantine's posthumous Divus coinage. If memory serves, Constantine was ironically the last emperor so honored. The Christianization of the Roman state was not complete until the reign of Theodosius.

 

Thanks for that, Seth77. One more resonant historical demonstration that, on doctrinal levels, at least in contrast to ethical ones, religion and politics don't mix. They have this funny but inexorable way of corrupting, rather than complementing eachother.

 

I think politics played an important role, but many people were genuinely confused. And (and this is my personal opinion) a lot of that old confusion unfortunately did turn to hatred and antisemitism. But then again, even today there is an air of familiarity if you visit old churches and old synagogues. At least in Eastern Europe -- you have Gothic Sephardim and Moorish Ashkenazim -- such an intricate and complex web of mixing and adapting.

 

Wow. Gothic Sephardim and Moorish (....HUH?!!?!) Ashkenazim. All of which is news to yours truly. Guess the species as a whole tends to follow a similar trajectory to any given life. You get more complicated as you go along.

 

It's the different ways in which Jews in Eastern Europe built their synagogues, even if this is a fairly modern phenomenon -- it does harken back to the commonalities we inhabit, that become normal to us although they might have been completely foreign to our ancestors. Long story short you can have instances of Western Sephardim of originally Ladino heritage that, once moved East will end up building their synagogues in the (neo)Gothic style, probably under the German influence, but in Eastern Europe. And German Jews of Yiddish heritage which have -- at least on the shore of the Black Sea -- opted for a North-African-Andalusian architecture, mainly under the influence of the Ottoman Empire and the "orientalist" longing. This is of course a sidetrack, sorry if it got distracting from the topic.