Featured Coin
What collectors call Greek Imperial coins were the issues of Greek cities as part of the Roman Empire. The vast majority of these show an obverse portrait of the Emperor or some member of his family. The reverse was available for subjects of local interest and varied greatly from place to place. Most cities issued only bronze coins with their precious metal requirements being met by the regular Roman Imperial denominations. A few special cities were granted the honor of a local coinage in silver. One was Caesarea in Cappadocia. The coins of Caesarea under Septimius Severus were dated with the Greek numeral for the year of the reign starting with 'B' for year two. The absence of year one might suggest that Caesarea did not declare allegiance to Severus in his war with Pescennius Niger until after the first of January 194.
Septimius Severus - Silver Drachm -194 AD- Caesarea, Cappadocia / Victory walks left on globe
AV lambda CE pi - CEOVHPOC / MHTPO - KECAPIAC - E - R
19mm - 2.6g.
The above paragraph should have driven off 90% of the people who started this page. Why, then, did I post it? The study of Numismatics is one of minutia. Specialists zoom in on a small area of coinage and study every detail of every specimen to discover every minor bit of knowledge. After enough little bits of information are assembled, sometimes, a pattern can be recognised and the overview of the coinage appears. In this manner new mints are discovered or the internal structure of the mint can be deduced. Such little things also speak loudly in the recognition of modern fakes. Variation from the norm is 'normal' but that variation frequently followed a pattern or an idiom. Experience with this idiom protects from some (far from all) creations of modern diecutters.
Certainly there is nothing wrong with collecting ancient coins in an overview manner. Thousands of collectors set a goal of one coin per Emperor and want no more. Others of us pick a speciality and nitpick it to death. Both approaches can be enjoyable. In fact I collect both generally and within a speciality (or six specialities). Caesarea is not my speciality so I do not know the answers to questions posed by this coin. If it is your area of expertise, I would love to hear from you.
(AV) lambda CE pi - CEOVHPOC MHTP(O pi )O - KAICAPI - ET - R Sydenham 393 |
(AV) lambda CE pi - CEOVHPOC MHTPO pi - KAICAPI - ETB Sydenham 389 |
(c) 1997 Doug Smith