On the obverse, a veiled woman wears a city's walls as a crown, a weak strike enhancing the effect of the veil. On the other side, two felt caps under two stars, tied with ribbons and wreathed in laurel. A word below ΣΟΛΕΩΝ, "of the people of Soloi" with an AΠ monogram below. The veiled woman is Tyche goddess of fortune. The Greek word tychē itself translates directly as "luck", "fortune", or "chance". It is derived from the Greek verb tynchanō (τυγχάνω), which means "to hap

When I read about the men who presided over the end of the Roman Republic, Caesar, Pompey, Antony, Octavian, Cassius, Brutus, the same question echoes: who was good and who was bad? I want to choose sides with Brutus. He was on the side of liberty - was he not? His coins say so in so many words - protecting Rome from the tyranny of Caesar. And then there are the events in Lycia, which question the practice of sorting historical figures into good and bad. Marc Antony's Oration

Ancient coins from auctions always have a dealer's attribution, sometimes tucked into the flip in tidy abbreviations. It can sometimes be dressed up to be very authoritative-looking and very often unreliable. Auction houses vary in their expertise, and even the best of them cannot be specialists in every series; everyone, eventually, makes a mis-call. The ticket is a starting point, as today's coin will illustrate. Here's what the dealer described Greek Mysia, Pergamon, AE ,

An arched structure of access to the cavea of the Aigai theater. A canting type is a coin design that makes a pun on the name of the issuing authority, almost always a city, by depicting an object, animal, or plant whose Greek name sounds like (or is identical to) the city's name. The term "canting" is a modern name borrowed from heraldry, where "canting arms" (armes parlantes) do the same thing for a family name. Ancient visual puns: the city's name, spoken in pictures. You

The Asklepieion, an ancient healing center in a city once known as Pergamon and today Bergama, Turkiye. Image Source: Travel & Beyond The Asklepieion was the sanctuary and healing complex of Asklepios (Latin Aesculapius), the god of medicine. It was located just outside the city of Pergamon on the plain below the acropolis. It functioned as something between a temple, a spa, a sanatorium, and a teaching hospital. Along with the sanctuaries at Epidauros, the cult's "mother" s

Silver Plaque with St. Paul Byzantine 550-600 CE. Public Domain Image with thanks to the NY MET. In the spring of 615 CE, in a Constantinople ringed by enemies, the imperial mint struck a coin that had no recent precedent. It was made of silver - a metal the city’s mint had largely abandoned for more than a century - and it carried, around the stepped cross on its reverse, a short Latin prayer that no Roman coin had ever borne before: dEUS AdIUtA ROmANIS ("God, help the Roman

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

Over the last decade or so my collection has been growing from an interest in the late Roman Republican period - with Sulla and the events of the 80s BC as the seed for the collection. A portrait coin of Mithridates has been on my list for most of that time - and I haven't been willing to commit to the price for a tetradrachm of Mithridates VI. Today's coin fills that gap.

M. Antonius Polemon (active AD 50–54) was the grandson of Polemon I and a great-grandson of the orator Zenon. He remained in the family's home city of Laodicea. He was a high-ranking Priest (Hiereus) and city official. He is also the great-great-grandson of Mark Antony by way Polemon I (the magistrate's grandfather) who married Pythodoris (the magistrate's great grandmother), the daughter of Antonia who was the daughter of Mark Antony (or was she?). There is a question mark o

The Battle at Actium in 31 BC, an early Roman Imperial monument, marble relief, first half of the 1st century A.D. (extensively restored in the 16th or 17th century) from the Collection of the Dukes of Cardona, Cordoba. Public Domain image via the Wikimedia Commons . Today's coin was issued in Antioch and comes with the story of the governor of Syria, blocking a team of gladiators from supporting Mark Antony after Actium. Anthony and Cleopatra died in August of 30 BC and the

The Roman Concept of the Day: * Sulcus Primigenius or "Initial Furrow Understanding the Initial Furrow The term sulcus primigenius ,...

Today's post begins with the hope of making some sense of the weight standards for a set of staters in my collection. A number of questions started this deep dive: What weight standards did the ancient Greeks use for ancient Greek coins? Why are these standards named the way they are today? What sources are the most useful to understand these standards? When did each standard come into use and who initiated the standard? What are the the various denominations used for ancie

This map (a detail from The Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, 1923 ) illustrates the western edge of Asia Minor, also known as...

Pompey had already earned a reputation for cleaning up messes when the Roman Senate passed Lex Gabinia (67 BCE) and Lex Manilia (66 BCE), which handed Pompey near‑unlimited imperium over the eastern Mediterranean. Gabinius’ law handed him 500 ships, fifteen legates and fiscal carte blanche; Manilius then united that navy with Lucullus’ veteran army. Pompey had cleaned up the rebels in Spain who were led by Q. Sertorius (The Sertorian War) and commemorated his victory in 74 BC

Detail from the Altıkulaç Sarcophagus (5th–4th c. BCE) discovered in Çingenetepe Tumulus (Çanakkale), today in the Troy Museum , features...

This week's coin of interest is a large 32mm coin (an AE Dirham of the Danishmendids). It was a steal at 20 EUR - yes it is ugly, yes it seems to be some sort of hot mess with a flan crack and maybe over-struck on some earlier coin? An unusual an interesting coin nonetheless...

In AD 100/101, during the reign of Emperor Trajan (regnal year 3 of Trajan’s rule), the city of Caesarea in Cappadocia (central Anatolia)...

In 133 BCE, King Attalos III of Pergamum died without an heir and bequeathed his entire kingdom to Rome. Aristonikos, who claimed to be an illegitimate son of Attalos’ father King Eumenes II, rose to challenge Rome’s takeover. Aristonikos took the dynastic name Eumenes III, presenting himself as the rightful king and rallying support for his cause.

Hierapolis, located within Cyrrhestica, northern Syria, was a major religious center dedicated to Atargatis, the "Syrian Goddess"...