This coin prompted a bit of exploration of the cursus honorem, the ladder of a political career in ancient Rome. It also added the word...

Marius and Sulla tore at the fabric of the Roman republic with their personal ambitions which led to civil wars for the Roman Republic in...

Gaius Marius (b. ~157 BC - d. 13 January 86 BC) was the rival of Sulla in the Roman Civil Wars between 87-80 BC. Marius was seven times...

One of the cryptic codes that you can recognize in Crawford’s Roman Republican Coinage (RRC) is “RE” as for this coin in the sentence on...

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

Recently I've been wandering from ancient into medieval coins and this one takes me far away from the Roman republic. When I originally...

In 2002 a tetradrachm was found with an obverse die of Seleucid King Antiochus VII and a reverse die shared with a tetradrachm of...

Roman Thermae at Hamat Gader, under Israeli control a few kilometers from the Jordanian border. These Springs were restored and reopened...

Modern coin collectors often seek mint state perfection. "NGC defines a Mint State or Proof 70 (PF-70) coin as having no post-production...

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,...

My coin for today is an unusual tetradrachm of Parthia, from a few years after the end of the Roman republic and the beginning of the...

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

With an Antoninianus of Probus with Salus reverse I have completed a set of 6 coins with a hidden message. I first learned of this...

“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...

This year I have explored the coins of Asia Minor or the Anatolian peninsula. Anatolia was named by the Greeks, anatolḗ means “sunrise"...

Bust of Cleopatra VII The mailman brought an interesting tetradrachm that highlights the detailed inspection that can be required to...