The arrival of an Alexandrian Tetradrachm of Commodus led to a deep dive into the life of Commodus and his coins. Commodus was the son of Marcus Aurelius and Faustina II. He was the third child and had a twin brother who died in 165 AD. He was educated by the scholars in the court of his father. "Marcus tried to educate Commodus by his own teaching and by that of the greatest and the best of men.In Greek literature he had Onesicrates as his teacher, in Latin, Antistius Capel

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...

Tyre is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. One of the best known episodes in Tyrian history is the resistance...

While the history is for me usually the draw, a first impression of the portrait and provenance are the reason that I now own this coin....

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 coins which I enjoy for their unusual portrait style and links to the early reign of Vespasian. The first with a reverse female portrait with turreted crown who looks like she could be Vespasian's sister. This coin is also interesting as it dates from the transition of power that took place in AD 69. These period of transition were often ch

A couple of years ago I posted a set of Roman republican denarii showing the 12 Olympians . The twelve Olympians were the major deities...

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...

I was immediately taken with this early portrait of Faustina II on my latest coin of interest. The details of both jeweled hair on the ...

Have you ever asked yourself: who are the collectors that I am bidding against? A search in ACSearch turned up some interesting...

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...

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...

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...

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

I am not expecting that most collectors look at this coin and say "Wow, that's a beautiful coin", I myself didn't have that reaction. I do see an intriguing coin and this is about a nice you can find in a 3rd century, billion (silver alloy, BI) stater from the Bosporus. The mystery of this coin is what attracted me. Bosporus Kingdom Some quick notes about the region over time. David McDonald's 2005 book on "History and Coinage of the Kingdom of Bosporos" from CNG is an excell

Today's coin is a fairly scarce issue from AD 353 which comes with interesting history of the years after Constantine the Great's death...

"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...

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