Today's coin of interest is a small provincial bronze with a portrait of Domitia wife of Domitian, pleasing green patina and a little dirt (literally and metaphorically). Suetonius was clearly not a big fan of Domitian - neither were the senators - when news of his death broke - Suetonius writes: "The senators on the contrary were so overjoyed, that they raced to fill the House, where they did not refrain from assailing the dead emperor with the most insulting and stinging ki

Silver Plaque with St. Paul Byzantine 550-600 CE. Public Domain Image with thanks to the NY MET. In the spring of 615 CE, in a Constantinople ringed by enemies, the imperial mint struck a coin that had no recent precedent. It was made of silver - a metal the city’s mint had largely abandoned for more than a century - and it carried, around the stepped cross on its reverse, a short Latin prayer that no Roman coin had ever borne before: dEUS AdIUtA ROmANIS ("God, help the Roman

A silver denarius of Septimius Severus, struck at the mint of Laodicea ad Mare between 198 and 202 CE, is a deceptively modest object - 17 millimeters in diameter and weighing 3.04 grams. The modesty underrepresents the significant geopolitical events at play. The first attractions are the fine style of the portrait, the cabinet tone, and the reverse legend VICTORIAE AVGG FEL. The coin carries a bearded portrait of the African-born emperor, advertising his self-claimed Antoni

The official story is that Romulus was taken up to heaven. On the seventh of July, Romulus was conducting a public sacrifice outside the city, at a place called the Goat's Marsh with the senate and most of the people present. A sudden storm broke. The sky darkened, a cloud descended to the ground, and violent winds and rain scattered the crowd. When the weather cleared, Romulus was gone. He was never found, alive or dead.