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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 8022722, member: 19463&quot;]The Latin reads:</p><p>modo nummos omnis notae, etiam veteres regios ac peregrinos</p><p><br /></p><p>&#039;Rules&#039; of word order in Latin differ from English.&nbsp; I take this as meaning the kings were &quot;old and foreign&quot; which would be the Hellenistic kings.&nbsp; Translators who did not know coins read it as referring to Roman kings so they stuck in the word to make their reading clear.&nbsp; Like English, grammar changed over time and it is always possible that a text came down to us less than clear even before editors and translators embellished it.&nbsp; Word for word translations do not always convey the original idea.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I found this interesting:</p><p><a href="http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/caligula/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/caligula/" rel="nofollow">http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/caligula/</a></p><p><i>Suetonius&#039; style is generally straightforward, although his vocabulary is wide. The challenge for students approaching him for the first time is his tendency to omit auxiliary verb forms (any form of esse is likely to drop), his very frequent use of indirect speech constructions, complex ablative absolute constructions, and substantive participles (which tend to compress the syntax). As with all authors, Suetonius&#039; style will become easier as you read the text.</i></p><p><br /></p><p>Clear as mud?&nbsp; I&#039;m no Latin scholar.&nbsp; We have some here.&nbsp; What say you? </p><p><br /></p><p>BTW there are coins that show Roman kings but they were issued much later in the Republic by moneyers who claimed descent.&nbsp; Exactly how the people of 88BC knew the appearance of the old kings is unclear to me.&nbsp; See Ancus Marcius and Numa Pompilius:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1390538[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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