Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Suarez, post: 3461713, member: 99239&quot;]Well, alright <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #000066">Any collection worth pursuing typically has a good number of common representatives and a handful of specimens so rare that they become legends. Coin collecting in particular, nicknamed the &#039;hobby of kings&#039;, highlights the challenge posed even to the wealthiest among the nobility to acquire the key specimen that will complete their set. </span></p><p><span style="color: #000066"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #000066">Apropos to this subject, a very long time ago, in or about the year 260 of the current era, a general whose very name meant king, sat to feast at a banquet accompanied by his officers, friends and staff. The vino flowed and, as has happened countless times before and since, the inhibition-deleting effects of the alcohol led to some crazy talk about politics. &quot;Gallienus sucks, Regalian!&quot; said one, perhaps, oblivious to the fact that jokes like this cost many a careless drunk his head. &quot;You should be our king! Hell, you ARE the king man!&quot;. And, as these things go, more wine yielded ever less giggling and more signs of testosterone. Before the night was out some wine-stained bedsheets and a crudely fashioned laurel wreath may well have served as Regalian&#039;s <i>regalia</i>. In the hours and days to come there would be plenty of time to reflect on &quot;the rashness of their folly&quot;, as Gibbon liked to say, but for now the last thing on their mind was worry over repercussions for their actions; to vent a little in this unloved outpost so far away from home! </span></p><p><span style="color: #000066"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #000066">Those repercussions, evidently, were not long in coming and you&#039;d be a fool to think that the Roman way, the <i>Gallienus</i> way, of settling disputes accommodated a heyyyy-it-was-all-a-misunderstanding-we&#039;re-good-now-right? sort of resolution. Whether the protagonist here was a willing participant or the victim of a prank made no difference at all according to the Roman brand of law. We can imagine that every single one of those people, including Regalianus&#039;s wife, who had the temerity to style herself empress too, all met violent deaths either by Gallienus&#039;s first detachment to arrive on the scene or possibly by the more sober among them who may have hoped that vigilante justice in the name of loyalism may at least spare them their lives for the affront they were associated in. Either way, Regalianus&#039;s little act of rebellion, and every memory of his previous deeds and accolades, are in an instant consigned to history&#039;s dustbin. </span></p><p><span style="color: #000066"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #000066">Well, not everything ;-) </span></p><p><span style="color: #000066"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #000066">For the few days that the charade was maintained an unknown number of coins - if you can call them that - were made to honor this man. Soldiers, unfortunately, are not the typical talent pool that yields fine craftsmen skilled in the delicate art of micro-sculpture. Some guy, again we can imagine, may have had an uncle whose best friend knew someone at the treasury in Rome and that was in all likelihood sufficient to have promoted him on the spot to Director of the Mint and Chief Art Engraver. This wreck you see here, that anonymous neophyte&#039;s handiwork, is one of the few artifacts left in the world testifying both to the historicity of the person as well as the embarrassingly low level of sophistication available with which to announce to the world the dawning of a new imperial age. </span></p><p><span style="color: #000066"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #000066">Which brings us back to the the whole affair over collecting. Those who collect Roman coins learn early on that the coins of the famous emperors, household names like Octavian, Nero and Hadrian, are the collectibles easiest to find and have the most variety of choices available. This, of course, is because of their long reigns and conquests gave them the time and resources to produce a large number of coins and, correspondingly, a statistically high number of which could survive antiquity. The opposite, of course, happens with the failed coups of aspiring emperors. The hostile environment of a rebellion is hardly a suitable birthplace for high-end art and this type of situation typically finds the usurper improvising emergency measures and having to make do without access to adequate facilities nor raw materials with which to prepare proper coinage. </span></p><p><span style="color: #000066"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #000066">Even among the rather lengthy list of failed revolts whose erstwhile leaders managed to mint some coins, those of Regalianus rank as among the very rarest; edged out only by three or four other losers whose few remaining coins are by and large owned by national collections rather than individuals. In all, there are probably less than 50 coins attributed to this emperor still in private hands. </span>[/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