The Schaefer die study pages were added not long ago to the Coinage of the Roman Republic Online .Over about 25 years, Richard Schaefer...

With this post, I return to the Roman Republic, with a coin from Lucius Cornelius Sulla. This denarius is from Sulla's dictatorship, November 82 BC to December 81 BC. Crawford adds a possibility that this coin may have been issued in celebration of the restoration of the republic when Sulla abdicated the dictatorship. I wander a bit far from Rome with the supporting coins in this post. Q. Fabius Maximus , Sullan Restoration Issue, AR Denarius (17mm, 4.00 g), struck circa 82-8

This coin honors a relative of the moneyer who was responsible for voting reforms. 63 BC was an eventful year with many familiar names: Lucullus and ally of Sulla and key general in the Third Mithridatic War, holds a triumph and retires. Pompey the Great is conquering in the East and will earn a third triumph in Rome after his return, in 61 AD. Marcus Tullius Cicero , foils the Cataline conspiracy , and is elected consul. Julius Caesar , the one of the Ides of March fame, i

The central figures in Raphael's fresco, "The School of Athens" are Plato and Aristotle. With gestures that reflect their body of work,...

Elephants must have looked like mythical monsters to the Romans when they first encountered them in battles against King Pyrrhus of...

“The cistophorus, with its writhing serpents and over-elaborate ornamentation, is perhaps the ugliest coin in the Greek series....

Some of the most used reference books for ancient coins are not new. For Roman republican coins, RRC was published by Crawford in 1974 –...

One does not have to look far to see signs in Nîmes, France of the city's origins as a Roman colony. The crocodile chained to the palm...

Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi , by Joseph-Benoît Suvée (1795, Louvre), Public Domain image from the wikipedia. Cornelia was the...

While it is possible that one more coin might show up this year, it seems unlikely that I will displace any of the coins listed below, so...

Walters Art Gallery, Twelve Gods Relief, 1st Century BC - 1st Century AD (Public Domain Image) The twelve Olympians were the major...

This is the first coin that I have with full obverse bust of Vulcan. I admit, that "dancing chicken" was not the intent of the moneyer,...

Image of Ceres giving her chariot to Triptolemus published in Les Metamorphoses d'Ouide,1621 With this coin, I am getting back to Roman...

I tend to shy away from discussion of the price of ancient coins - while the price is relevant, even primary, in defining which coins I...

Prusias II, King of Bithynia, Reduced to Begging (Public Domain Image, with thanks to the Getty Museum Open Content Program) In a...

After a number of diversions in Anatolia, and a bit of a Roman Republican drought, this week I added another Roman Republican coin to my...

I will start the story of this coin with Homer's Odyssey, and the passage where Odysseus and his crew are navigating between Charybdis, a...

It's been a while since I last purchased a Roman republican coin. Although my interest hasn't moved away - the coins that I am looking...

This denarius, gives me a reason to return to the story of Sulla and the War with Mithridates VI of Pontus. After hastily wrapping up...

After the first Social War (91-88 BC), in which Lucius Cornelius Sulla distinguished himself as a general especially in his defeat of the Samnites. He was elected consul in 88 BC with Quintus Pompeius Rufus. In the same year, his partnership with Pompeius was cemented with the marriage of Cornelia, the daughter of Sulla and his first wife Julia, and Q. Pompeius Rufus, the son of the co-consul. Sulla, 50 years old, was married to his third wife, Cloelia, whom he pushed aside o