Coin Tells Story of Late Roman Empire: Valentinian III, Honoria, Attila, Petronius, Licinia, and Gaiseric (original) (raw)
Related papers
Faces of Power. Roman Gold Coins from the Victor A. Adda Collection. Edited by H. Gitler and G. Gambash, 2017
The exhibition Faces of Power Roman Gold Coins from the Victor A. Adda Collection at the Israel Museum displays 75 coins that Jackie Adda Coen donated and as a tribute to a great collector and connoisseur, Victor A. Adda. These 75 eye-catching golden coins from Adda’s collection have never before been displayed to the public. Bearing the portraits of Roman emperors and their family members, these coins offer a rare glimpse into the world of the rulers of the Roman Empire, as well as revealing the great artistic skill involved in their creation and the use of the human face to reflect a person’s character, mostly as a means of propaganda. The exhibition follows the development of portraits on coinage over a period of almost 350 years, and relates to the slogans on the coins –– the majority of which include words relating to victory, security and peace –– displaying how little propaganda has changed over thousands of years. In conjunction with the exhibition we published a book with the same name as that of the exhibition. The content of this book is a result of numerous discussions I had with Jackie and our mutual interest in bringing together a group of specialists on Roman numismatics to contribute from their knowledge in order to produce an extensive work that covers the periods to which the 75 gold coins date. This publication is a result of the work of 17 devoted scholars who are first of all my friends. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to each one of them. The book begins with a personal touch, the life story of Victor A. Adda in Jackie’s own words. This lovely text takes us back to Alexandria at the turn of the twentieth century. Arturo Russo, to whom we are ever indebted for funding and publishing this volume, describes the Adda collection in context, as one of the century’s major collections of Roman gold coins. The collection consists of just over 1,000 coins, of which the main nucleus is Roman: 761 aurei and solidi covering a period from Julius Caesar to Romulus Augustulus, from the last years of the republic to the end of the empire. Side by side with Roman coins, the Adda collection also included 38 Byzantine gold coins; 65 Bosporus staters; 28 Greek pieces and the 11 issues (+ one small cake ingot) of the renowned Delta hoard. The attractive selection of 106 Egyptian coins begins with a beautiful Nectenebo II stater depicting a bridled horse and two hieroglyphs: collar with six beads (nwb = gold), heart and windpipe (nfr = good). It is followed by an impressive selection of Ptolemaic gold and silver issues, which culminated with Cleopatra at Ascalon. Catharine Lorber, a leading expert on Ptolemaic coins and one of my dearest friends, commented the following on this section of the collection: “The greatest rarity that should be pointed out, even more than the wonderful Cleopatra tetradrachm of Ascalon, is a unique mnaieion depicting the radiate Ptolemy V (without the spear), dated to year 6. Also important and worth mentioning are two extremely rare portrait mnaieia of Arsinoe III, one from Alexandria and the other from a Syro-Phoenician mint, and a tetradrachm and didrachm of Paphos depicting Ptolemy VIII with a radiate diadem and wearing the aegis like a chlamys. These varieties are the only coin portraits of Arsinoe III and Ptolemy VIII and accordingly the only reliable evidence we have for their appearance. Overall, I would observe that the Ptolemaic collection favors gold over silver and is especially strong in third-century issues, no doubt reflecting Victor A. Adda’s ability to acquire coins from the Benha hoard of 1936 (IGCH 1694). Adda made a point of collecting unpublished varieties, especially of mnaieia in the name of Arsinoe Philadelphus, and very rare small denominations like the half mnaieion depicting the radiate Ptolemy III and the quarter mnaieion of the K-series Arsinoes. One can observe that he was interested in style, favoring coins of beautiful style but also ensuring that his collection included a range of attractive or interesting styles, especially in the portraiture of Arsinoe Philadelphus. It’s obvious that Victor A. Adda was extremely knowledgeable about Ptolemaic gold coinage, and that he possessed exquisite taste”. A selection of 16 pages of Victor’s Adda’s handwritten French catalogue are illustrated along with scannings of the plates of the entire Victor A. Adda collection, which appeared in a private catalogue produced by Christie’s in 1986 for the family (part of the Victor A. Adda collection was sold in two Christie’s auctions in 1984 and 1985). A brief introduction about the aureus as the premier coin in the Roman monetary economy is followed by papers written by 14 scholars, covering a period of more than 300 years, from the end of the republic (first century BCE) to the beginning of the fourth century CE (Richard Abdy, Michel Amandry, Roger Bland, Andrew Burnett, Aleksander Bursche, Gil Gambash, Cristian Gazdac, Haim Gitler, Achim Lichtenberger, Jerome Mairat, Rodolfo Martini, Markus Peter, Johan van Heesch, Bernhard E. Woytek). These papers focus on crucial developments during the Golden Age of the Roman Empire as reflected by the Adda coins. In a comprehensive overview of this volume, Matti Fischer outlines a framework for analysis of the Roman emperors’ portraits themselves. This includes the use of art-historical methods such as analysis of the frame, composition, the physiognomy, the iconography of the bust and face and meanings inherent in the use of style, and the special type of production and distribution unique to coins. He provides insights into the meaning of identity and value while projecting new concepts relevant to research both of ancient coins and of modern uses of the face. Yaniv Schauer, co-curator of the exhibition, prepared with the help of Jonathan Grimaldi from NAC an extensive catalogue of 611 of 1,012 coins from the original collection that are dated to the period under discussion. This catalogue includes valuable information on the provenance of those specimens that Victor Adda purchased on the antiquities market. I would like to thank my dear friend Gil Gambash for co-editing this volume and for his most productive insights during our dialogues about the exhibition.
Roman Politics in the Late Empire – and coins
Abstract. Coins provide source material for the study of the Later Empire explicitly from what is written and portrayed on them, and the place and authority in which they were struck, and implicitly by the style of portrait and the choice of reverse type. The use and control of the metals makes a series of political points. Portraiture changed very sharply around the year 294 from individuality to the representation of authority. Reverse types in the later empire were much more limited and concentrated than the wide variety of representations in the earlier empire. The changes crystallised around 274 to 294, the date at which all city mints ceased local production. These are signs of a move towards a heavily centralised money supply dictated by more strongly emphasised authority. Control of metals, especially gold, followed the same path, though reforms in the middle of the fourth century may suggest that silver was let out of state control and 'privatised'.
Roman Coinage and the Triumviri Monetales from 139 BC to the Fall of the Republic
This dissertation has been written with the aim of analysing the importance of the changes that appear on the coin types of Rome beginning in the 130s BC. To do so an analysis firstly of the numismatic evidence is necessary to determine exactly what these developments are and to speculate the significance of such changes. To contextualise and emphasise these changes references will be made to earlier coinage of the Hellenistic kingdoms and the Romano-Campanian of Southern Italy in order to demonstrate the similarities and differences that these new issues of coins present. Then, it is also necessary to provide a discussion of the office responsible for the production of coinage, the Triumviri Monetales. The study of this new style of Roman coinage provides a unique opportunity to the modern historian because individual nature of these issues communicates exactly how these men wished themselves to be depicted in the public eye. By determining the roles which these minor officials fulfilled we can conclude their function within the general operation of the state and ways in which these young men treated the office itself in relation to desires such as desires for election into the Senate and to demonstrate their loyalty to particular political factions. What becomes apparent from this study is that this change in coin types, possibly caused by changes in electoral laws like the lex Gabinia of 139 BC, is that the iconography and legends chosen directly reflect the contemporary attitudes and concerns of these middling bureaucrats of the period. This is demonstrated by the changing trends in the coin types, from the representation of the family and their achievements to the development of ‘patron’ types which suggest that the men were making use of their office in order to publically promote their loyalties to those who they supported.
AN APPRAISAL OF THE NEWLY FOUND ROMAN IMPERIAL COIN OF OCTAVIAN AUGUSTUS
We report an unreported Roman Imperial silver trade coin of Octavian Augustus without legend on the obverse side, found somewhere in Tamil Nadu, India. The literary comparison is done with existing catalogs and books to establish the narrative that, this unreported coin has no legend on the obverse.
Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology, 2021
The paper presents an unknown coin die, which is for obverse of denarii of Augustus. The coin die is said to have been found many years ago in the vicinity of the village of Gigen, district of Pleven – near the ancient Roman colony of Ulpia Oescus and is now kept in a private collection. Only the bronze plate is preserved, where in negative is featured a portrait of Augustus, turned to the left, and around the portrait image is disposed the legend: AVGVSTVS DIVI F – mirrored. The coin type of the coin die is for denarii of Augustus struck in the mint at Lugdunum (today Lyon, France) between 15 and 11 BC. The new coin die presented is of the same type as one of the coin dies from the collection of the National Institute of Archaeology with Museum in Sofia. The collection of the same museum in Sofia stores another obverse coin die for denarii of Augustus of a type struck in the mint at Colonia Patricia (today Cordoba, Spain). All three obverse coin dies for denarii of Augustus are discussed in a general context, because their time of making is between 17 – 16 and 15 – 11 BC. All three obverse coin dies of Augustus are represented as dies of moving military camp mints. Keywords: coin die, Augustus, military camp coinage, Oescus, Moesia.
Roman Empresses' Coins from a Private Collection: A Descriptive Archaeological Study
Archaeological Discovery, 2023
This is the first study of a unique private collection of coins belonging to Roman empresses. The collection includes silver and bronze/copper coins bearing inscriptions, pictures, symbols, and monograms. These coins have significant artistic implications as they represent unique Roman styles and types, and some of them are rare. The time frame of the existence and usage of the study sample extends from the beginning of the first century A.D. to the beginning of the fourth century A.D., concurrent with the emergence of the Roman Empire and the height of its expansion and prosperity. The study also seeks to discuss the reasons these coins depicting the empresses were produced; for example, the marriage of Marcus Aurelius with the emperor's daughter, Faustina the Younger-the coins attesting the desire for the continuation of the dynasty and celebrating the beginning of a new Saeculum Aureum. The coinage also reflects the joint rule of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus until 169 A.D., when Faustina II and Lucilla were depicted. Homonoia and the victory over Armenia were also depicted, and the decades are celebrated. We also discuss the possible reasons for the deterioration of bronze coinage in the second half of 2nd century A.D. and the reasons that led to a substantial increase in coinage in the name of Augusta at the end of Hadrian's reign.