Caesar LII or IIT - Interesting article

[carthago]

An interesting article link to an alternative interpretation of the LII found on certain coins of Julius Caesar. 

http://cora.ucc.ie/bitstream/handle/10468/146/DW_CaesarsPV2010.pdf

I know nothing about Latin and thus the interpretations reached in this paper, but I've never been comfortable with the common explanation that those symbols are numbers and thus a reference to Caesar's age at the time of minting.  As a simpleton, it just has never made sense to me that the coinage celebrates his birthdays.  It would just seem to me that Julius Caesar would be a bit over his birthdays being a big deal by this time in his life/career. 

[curtislclay]

An interesting review of the question, but I am not convinced by Woods' suggestion.

"Caesar has gone" is just too mysterious for an inscription on a coin, in my opinion.

Coin legends should record an undeniable benefit or accomplishment and be explicit. Compare some of the other Roman coin legends that include verbs, all in the simple past tense, not the perfect:

"Memmius as aedile was the first to celebrate games for Ceres."

"At the age of 15 he killed an enemy and saved the life of a fellow citizen."

"Having established peace for the Roman people on land and sea, he closed the temple of Janus."

"As consul for the 14th time he celebrated saecular games."

We may not know why a Roman commander of this period would record his age on coins, but one apparently did, namely Mark Antony with A XL and A XLI (Year 40, Year 41) on his Gallic quinarii of 43-42 BC, Crawford 489/5-6. It seems to me that this supports the interpretation of LII on Caesar's coins as representing his age, though Woods wants to argue that the absence of A ('Year') before Caesar's '52' should mean that it wasn't a numeral specifying his age!

[carthago]

An interesting review of the question, but I am not convinced by Woods' suggestion.

"Caesar has gone" is just too mysterious for an inscription on a coin, in my opinion.

Coin legends should record an undeniable benefit or accomplishment and be explicit. Compare some of the other Roman coin legends that include verbs, all in the simple past tense, not the perfect:

"Memmius as aedile was the first to celebrate games for Ceres."

"At the age of 15 he killed an enemy and saved the life of a fellow citizen."

"Having established peace for the Roman people on land and sea, he closed the temple of Janus."

"As consul for the 14th time he celebrated saecular games."

We may not know why a Roman commander of this period would record his age on coins, but one apparently did, namely Mark Antony with A XL and A XLI (Year 40, Year 41) on his Gallic quinarii of 43-42 BC, Crawford 489/5-6. It seems to me that this supports the interpretation of LII on Caesar's coins as representing his age, though Woods wants to argue that the absence of A ('Year') before Caesar's '52' should mean that it wasn't a numeral specifying his age!

I'm not necessarily convinced at Woods argument and I can't really talk intelligently about the Latin interpretation because I don't know Latin to the degree necessary to be conversant tenses.  I just thought it was interesting to see someone bucking the accepted meaning of these numerals.

I also agree with you that that legends are typically explicit, and to my mind stand alone numerals such as this without any identifying information information with them such as COS, LEG, etc may make it difficult to make a firm determination of their meaning.

Perhaps Caesar was "in between" titles at the moment, like some of us in the modern work world might be "between jobs" and this was the best that he could come up title wise to mark the occasion!

An example of the Antony issue attached: