Coping with the pen shop closure

I mentioned a few weeks ago about the sudden demise of my favourite pen shop in Nottingham, Pensense. It was a hammer blow to my heart! 

However, I am not one to dwell and have decided that this great hole in my heart must be filled. So, I have found a new hobby! 

I shall become a coin collector! 

Here is my first real effort. It is a silver Antoninianus. It is 1780 years old. It could have been minted between 238 - 244ACE. We know this because it shows the profile of the Roman Emperor, Gordian III

 

He became the youngest sole emperor in 238 at 13 years old. He died, or was assassinated in 244 by his close friends or closer generals after the Roman Army was defeated in battle near modern day Fallijah, in Iraq, by the Persians. 

It still, even now, amazes me at how far the influence and marching of the Roman army was. From a capital in Italy they were defeated 2,400 miles away on some dusty plain. In the end, either during the battle or afterwards Gordian died aged 19 yrs old. A six-year reign. 

Why are coins so fascinating? In the Roman period there was a master stroke. It was discovered by a certain Roman general and aristocrat called Julius Caesar. His masters role was this. Why should he not put his face on a coin? 

Oddly, no-one had ever considered putting a living mans image on a coin up to this point. It was mythical images. Caesar, the ultimate politician, saw the benefit of this and he began minting coins with his face. Every coin in the empire passed from hand to hand with his face on it, an expression of his power and a way of people knowing him. The greatest form of propaganda was discovered and implemented. From then on, emperors ensured that the empire knew who they were through the minting and issuing of coins. 

This formula is used up to and including today. In the UK the monarchs head remains on the coinage. A direct relationship between Elizabeth II and Julius Caesar. When you are illiterate, you read pictures. This is what coins and perhaps my favourite, pub signs are for. 

Gordian’s image though, as mentioned, nearly 2,000 yrs old. At some point in the Roman Empire a mint was provided with some blank silver disks and they began hammering out this coins. This was one of them. It then disappeared out into the world.

Who knows what this coin has bought. Maybe a pot of the rotten Roman fish sauce Garum? was it used in a brothel as payment? perhaps as a payment towards food, or an assassin. If the coin could speak I imagine it’s story would be amazing. Though maybe it was a sadder tale and on transportation from the mint it fell from the transport and lodged itself into a part of a verge to be found by a detectorist many hundreds or thousands of years later, having never been spent. 

Who knows. This is why coins are fascinating. It’s the story of them, isn’t? 

And the final fascinating aspect is we have a coin of a boy who died aged 19 in modern Iraq. The coin itself was minted in modern London. All part of the same Empire, that’s how incredibly large the Roman Empire was.