Today's post looks at another coin from the unraveling Roman Republic. This coin issued in 47 BC only a few years before the...

Inflation for the moment seems to be relaxing a bit, the price of gas, one of the more daily visible symbols, was $3.30 a gallon...

Marseille Greek Colony, P. Puvis de Chavannes, 1869, oil on canvas, commissioned in 1867 by the city of Marseille for the west wing of...

In 27 BC, the Roman Senate granted Octavian the title of "Augustus" and he became the first Roman Emperor, effectively ending the Roman...

My coins of interest today recognize the Ludi Saeculares (Secular Games). This post explores the origins from the time of the Roman...

My coin of interest today was issued by Gaius Cassius Longinus not long before Mark Antony defeated him at Philippi where he committed...

Both coins shared today are sometime labeled by auction houses as "castrensis moneta mint in Italy?". The description is one that...

Ruins of Herod's Castle in Fortress Massada, Israel, used under license from Shutterstock. Vespasian and his sons used their success in...

"CXXXII. The offering is to be made in this way: Offer to Jupiter Dapalis a cup of wine of any size you wish, observing the day as a...

The modern countries, bordering the Mediterranean, west of Egypt, in northern Africa (Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia)...

The Roman republic of the first century BC is my home base for collecting. My latest AR denarius, from 83 BC, was issued by Gaius...

Since I first wrote about this coin four years ago, this 2017 ANS book by William E. Metcalf has become one that I've frequently...

This article was originally issued in July 2021, as we celebrated the 4th, in the United States, and the American Declaration of...

The First Triumvirate was a powerful coalition between Julius Caesar, a young and charismatic populist, two more senior leaders who both...

This past week these notes pages tipped over 200 posts - which gives me an excuse to think about how to better organize these posts going...

August Signs I picked up this little coin mostly for the well executed scorpion. It is a little bronze weighing, 2.88mg and 13mm in...

If you look beneath the surface and consider what happened and what it felt like to the people who lived in these times, the environment in which our European ancestors lived must have been brutal and inhumane. The story of this hurried and inelegant series of denarii gives pause to reflect on the events of the time: could the Romans have reached a different outcome? Lessons from ancient Rome appear to me to be no less relevant, 2000 years later, to policy debates and our ind

Terrence was a former slave who became a famous playwright from the Roman republic. He wrote six comic plays in the mid 2nd century BC, then inexplicably disappeared circa 160 BC. All of his 6 plays have survived to today. Suetonius wrote a short biography, which primarily highlights the conflicting and varied stories about the author. Publius Terentius Afer, born at Carthage, was the slave at Rome of Terentius Lucanus, a senator, who because of the young man's talent and go

M. Aemilius Scaurus & M. Caecilius Metellus chosen as consuls in 638 AUC (ab urbe condita or 'from the founding of the City'). Image from...

A Roman republican denarius from a moneyer with a family name that traces to the legendary origins of Rome (7th century BC) and the...