With the end of the Third Mithridatic War, Rome became the supreme power in control of all the Mediterranean. Pompey celebrated a victory...

Dionysos, god of wine, pleasure, wildness was the son of Zeus and princess Semele of Thebes. His mother was killed by Hera's jealousy...

Hegesidemus writes that in the city of Iasos a boy named Hermias, while riding across the sea on a dolphin lost his life...

Maximinus II is known in coin auctions as Daia, this name perhaps a misspelling from the writing of Lacantius, that is challenged by...

The Phoenician city of Aradus issued attic weight drachms closely imitating the Ephesian types from 171/0 BC (year 89) to 110/09 BC (year...

Perhaps close to Valentine's day it is appropriate to begin with a love story between fish and goats. These passages from Oppian's...

My coin of interest today is a rare civic issue of a small town from the time of the Roman civil wars, perhaps very near to the time of...

Ruins of Nicopolis ad Istrum - public domain image via wikimedia commons. Novius Rufus was a legate (hypateon) or praeses (hegemon) of...

These coin are not pretty by most standards, but they are interesting for the history they witnessed ~2100 years ago during the First Mithridatic War. When paying your soldiers, money should look like money. It doesn't hurt to put your face on it ensure people don't forget who paid them. It is can't hurt to link yourself with a great ruler and a god or goddess. The first two coins today were minted to fund Mithridates' war and his troops. The third was minted under Roman cont

These notes were originally written for the tetradrachm from Antioch, that is found at the end of this text, with a fabulous Tyche. The...

In an earlier post (Sept 15, 2020), I shared two Roman Imperial denarii of Vespasian from Ephesus. I have since added two more of these...

When Attalus III died in the late spring or early summer of 133 BC, he bequeathed his kingdom to the Romans. This Early Cistophoric Coin...

Greek wrestlers apparently had more than one move. "These staters which seemingly display only a pair of wrestling figures at first...

"It’s for each of us to decide whether to believe in one Homer or in many, in a blind bard or in a spirit that encapsulates the most...

Since my first note (November 2020) on countermarks of Attic standard tetradrachms, I have added three more coins, so my notes needed some...

Seleucid King Antiochus The Great (223-187 BC), expanded his empire by installing Artaxias as the governor (strategos) of Greater Armenia...

I have been slowly adding Cistophoric tetradrachms from various cities in Asia minor, and today was looking back at one of my first posts...

It is a new year, 2022! Appropriately, today's post opens with new beginnings and Aeneas arriving from Troy to the shores of Italy and...

After wandering a bit into medieval Islamic coins and the Mongol khans of the 13th and 14th century, I inevitably return to 1st century...

"The site of the Cilician city known during the period of the Roman Empire as Caesarea, Caesarea by Anazarbus, or Anazarbus , is some 28...