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

Having failed to capture or kill Mithridates of Pontus, Lucullus lost credibility with the Senate and his troops. He was replaced by...

On June 16th 2021, Public Law 17 from the 117th Congress established June 19th as "Juneteenth National Independence Day", a legal public...

​In the US, the third Sunday in June is reserved to celebrate fathers. While several internet sites mention the necktie as tie most...

My coin of interest today is a Roman Egyptian tetradrachm from Claudius II "Gothicus", features jugate busts of Nilus and Euthenia. The...

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

A detail from The Battle at the Milvian Bridge, 1666, an etching by Gérard Audran (1640-1703) after a painting by Charles Le Brun (1619–1690). The unfinished painting by Le Brun, was meant to prove he had surpassed the famous version designed by Raphael for the Vatican in the early 16th century. In the painting, Constantine charges across a bridge (today Ponte Milvio) toward Maxentius who falls into the Tiber. (image Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons ) Today's follis of Co

Nero was a fan of Greek Athletics. He tried to set up the Neronia, a Roman counterpart of the Olympics and other Pan-Hellenic festivals...

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

Sewage systems have a long history. One ancient sewer from the Sumarian city Eshnunna in central Mesopotamia, consisted of brick sewers...

My coin of interest today is one of few coins, that I have, issued in the name of a reigning Queen (βασίλισσα). The AE coin also appears...

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...

This post was originally published in August 27, 2020 and has been updated with additional coins, references and images. I had been...

A brief note today on a small coin from Hadrian, contrasted here with a large sestertius from Rome. The smaller coin is an uncertain...

This week, we return to Rome with a (Crawford 399) denarius depicting Neptune and Amphitrite/Salacia. The time period a few years after...

This 1831 mezzotint print depicts the battle of Ascalon (circa CE 1192), with Richard I King of England, on a white charger, wielding an axe and grasping shield of Saladin, Yusuf ibn Ayyub ibn Shadhi, on a dark horse. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 for non-commercial use via the British Museum. Baha ad-Din praises Saladin for his piety, his generosity, his calm, his chivalry, his just defense of the weak, his courage: "While I was thinking this [my great dread of the sea], he turned to me a

This Islamic coin captured my interest with it's unusual highlight of "lillah" in an eye shape with dots from the 14th century (Note:...

I have accumulated a few coins from ancient India. Today's post shares several and focuses on the Buddhist symbols on a particularly unusual coin from the edge of Greek & Roman influence. Sulla never made it as far east as Punjab or Nepal, however my coin of interest today is a coin from the northeast of India, just south of the Himalayas, and it is from my favorite time period (issued during the lifetime of Roman republican general and consul Lucius Cornelius Sulla). In hand

Today's post looks at another coin from the unraveling Roman Republic. This coin issued in 47 BC only a few years before the assassination of Julius Caesar (Ides of March 44 BC) and in the midst of Caesar's civil war with Pompey's allies (49-45 BC). The coin comes with a story of the proscriptions under Mark Antony, Octavian, & Lepidus as the triumvirate they took control. The moneyer responsible for this coin (along with Cicero and hundreds or thousands of others) was on the

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