Byzantine coins are an acquired taste. These are not the coins you put on display to impress your friends. This one in particular has no portrait, no triumphant emperor gazing out from a field of bronze. The obverse gives you a monogram: interlocked Greek letters folded into a hieroglyphic knot. The reverse gives you a large E and a small K. That is all. The Coin Byzantine Justin II (565-578 AD). Kyzikos AE Pentanummium Obv: Monogram of Justin II Rev: Large E, K in right f

Map of Lydia circa 50 AD on the western edge of modern Turkije showing Smyrna (red dot). Image Source: Caliniuc, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons . The Coin Today's coin of interest is a dichalkon. Everyday money. The head on the obverse has what Milne calls a "more angular pose" - Milne's group δ (delta) are the least refined coins from Smyrna's final autonomous period. The border is neater than the other dies of this group, and this coin has excellent details compared

Such is the cycle of political revolution, the course appointed by nature in which constitutions change, disappear, and finally return to the point from which they started. -Polybius, Histories, 6.9.10

"Scholars commonly credit the ancient Romans with publishing the first newspaper, Acta Diurna, or daily doings, in 59 BCE. Although no copies of this paper have survived, it is widely believed to have published chronicles of events, assemblies, births, deaths, and daily gossip." - History of Newspapers, Chapter 2.1 from an Open Textbook used by Washington State University (and others) Roman Media From the 1st century BCE in the Roman Republic and into the empire, coins were