It is the last night of Readercon. With the help of a reading light, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ckd's iPad, and schreibergasse as a sounding board and Latin-reading double-check, I just spent approximately an hour identifying a pair of small, corroded Constantinian bronzes for kythryne. These are a series of Roman bronze coins from the mid-fourth century CE, belonging to a larger class of small coin called the follis. They had come in a mixed lot of ancient coins—mostly Chinese—from the dealer's room.
The smaller one was very worn on its faces and ragged around the edges; there was a right-facing profile just visible on the obverse and no text remaining anywhere. I thought at first that I was looking at three stalks of wheat on the reverse, but it turned out to be two soldiers standing to either side of a legionary standard. The size of the coin made it an AE4, the smallest of the Constantinian bronzes; we couldn't narrow down an emperor beyond "Constantine I or any of his three sons and his nephew who were Caesar after him," during all of whose reigns coins of this type were issued, but the presence of one standard rather than two means it must have been minted after the coin was reduced in weight in 330 CE. It didn't look like such a distinctive type that it would have been possible for us to determine where it came from without a mintmark, however. In any case, I don't know.
The larger one retained much more detail on both faces and some discernible fragments of legends, although it had also developed a tiny hole through one side, less like a piercing than a weird crack. The bust on the obverse was facing right, wearing a diadem with visible fillet-ends. The reverse with a figure standing with a straight line in its left hand and a smudge above its right turned out to be the emperor holding a labarum in one hand and an image of Victory in the other. It was minted in Cyzicus, as we determined from deciphering the mintmark "SMK"—Sacra Moneta Kyzicus. (It looked most like "SMKK," actually, but we couldn't find that variant attested anywhere online. I don't want to guess at the fourth letter now without the coin to refer to.) The word "RESTITUTOR" was just visible around the left side of the reverse, meaning the blurred letters around the other side were "REIPUBLICAE." We couldn't make out the emperor's name for certain, but the closest matches to the type belonged to the reign of Valentinian I. Size-wise, it was an AE3.
I took one numismatics class in grad school. The material was interesting, but the class did not work out well for me. It's neither an excuse nor the full explanation, but coins did not make sense to me then in the same way as Greek verbs or narrative patterns. This evening went a long way toward making me feel better about my visual acuity and my relationship with classical currency. Also, I was in a room with five to six other people who were enthusiastically discussing amazing-sounding terrible movies (The Return of Captain Invincible (1983) was described at length, leading inevitably to a discussion of Christopher Lee's metal career) and still thought the archaeology going on in the far corner was cool. Whether this has anything to do with literature or not, it's one of the reasons I love Readercon. I was very worried about the convention this year: I was going into it exhausted, stressed, unhappy, and very concerned it would just wear me out. So far, honestly, it's been better for me than almost any weekend of recent memory. I still expect to sleep for a week when I get back.
ckd's iPad, and schreibergasse as a sounding board and Latin-reading double-check, I just spent approximately an hour identifying a pair of small, corroded Constantinian bronzes for kythryne. These are a series of Roman bronze coins from the mid-fourth century CE, belonging to a larger class of small coin called the follis. They had come in a mixed lot of ancient coins—mostly Chinese—from the dealer's room.The smaller one was very worn on its faces and ragged around the edges; there was a right-facing profile just visible on the obverse and no text remaining anywhere. I thought at first that I was looking at three stalks of wheat on the reverse, but it turned out to be two soldiers standing to either side of a legionary standard. The size of the coin made it an AE4, the smallest of the Constantinian bronzes; we couldn't narrow down an emperor beyond "Constantine I or any of his three sons and his nephew who were Caesar after him," during all of whose reigns coins of this type were issued, but the presence of one standard rather than two means it must have been minted after the coin was reduced in weight in 330 CE. It didn't look like such a distinctive type that it would have been possible for us to determine where it came from without a mintmark, however. In any case, I don't know.
The larger one retained much more detail on both faces and some discernible fragments of legends, although it had also developed a tiny hole through one side, less like a piercing than a weird crack. The bust on the obverse was facing right, wearing a diadem with visible fillet-ends. The reverse with a figure standing with a straight line in its left hand and a smudge above its right turned out to be the emperor holding a labarum in one hand and an image of Victory in the other. It was minted in Cyzicus, as we determined from deciphering the mintmark "SMK"—Sacra Moneta Kyzicus. (It looked most like "SMKK," actually, but we couldn't find that variant attested anywhere online. I don't want to guess at the fourth letter now without the coin to refer to.) The word "RESTITUTOR" was just visible around the left side of the reverse, meaning the blurred letters around the other side were "REIPUBLICAE." We couldn't make out the emperor's name for certain, but the closest matches to the type belonged to the reign of Valentinian I. Size-wise, it was an AE3.
I took one numismatics class in grad school. The material was interesting, but the class did not work out well for me. It's neither an excuse nor the full explanation, but coins did not make sense to me then in the same way as Greek verbs or narrative patterns. This evening went a long way toward making me feel better about my visual acuity and my relationship with classical currency. Also, I was in a room with five to six other people who were enthusiastically discussing amazing-sounding terrible movies (The Return of Captain Invincible (1983) was described at length, leading inevitably to a discussion of Christopher Lee's metal career) and still thought the archaeology going on in the far corner was cool. Whether this has anything to do with literature or not, it's one of the reasons I love Readercon. I was very worried about the convention this year: I was going into it exhausted, stressed, unhappy, and very concerned it would just wear me out. So far, honestly, it's been better for me than almost any weekend of recent memory. I still expect to sleep for a week when I get back.
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