The implicit identification of the individual portrayed with the state was obviously a problem for the Romans, although it may have been partially mitigated by the tradition that coin types might be private.

ex Gabinia of 139 BC, which sought to restrain electoral corruption by introducing a secret ballot, is clearly relevant to this theme, although there is perhaps no need to see a direct link with the increased political content of the coinage (as an alternative means of canvassing,

The explanation lies in the increasing acceptability of public display as a weapon in the heightened competition within the elite at Rome

For instance, when the Mauryan king Asoka sought to spread the word of Buddha to the inhabitants of his Indian kingdom, the languages he chose for his north-western territories were Aramaic and Greek, as is attested in a bilingual inscription on a pillar from Kandahar in modern Afghanistan.

Here it is possible to study the inter-relationships between the documents as names, families, problems and themes recur, allowing the creation of a context and a fuller picture of the world that produced the docu- ments.

An important reason for its survival in Egypt is the climate; the dry ground of the desert is ideal for its preservation.

Papyrus was a writing material made from the Cyperuspapyws, a plant that grew in the marshes and lakes of Egypt and especially in the Nile Delta. Outside Egypt it was rare, giving the region a virtual monopoly over papyrus production. Although used for writing throughout the ancient world, it has survived best in Egypt, where it has been found as cartonnage, in rubbish dumps, and in the ruins of buildings.

Inscribed stones were both symbols of civic life and part of the physical make-up of the city.

f we look at the Teian texts discussed above, it is evident that their content is varied - education, piracy and royal cult - but in each case, directly or indirectly, someone is remembered and honoured by the act of inscription, Polythros, the contributors, the king. This is not to suggest that all inscription is honorific but in a culture in which the rich are expected to perform services for their city honour is highly prized and may consequently help to shape our image of a city. It may even be the city itself which is honoured

It is to the Augustan age that we owe the only extant narratives of the hundred years or so which followed Alexander’s death, one in Greek by Diodoros, the other in Latin by Pompeius Trogus,

he only Hellenistic history to survive in any quantity is the study of Rome’s rise to power written by Polybios in the second century BC

Texts appear on various materials and in various scripts; there is Egyptian in hieroglyphs and demotic, Akkadian on cuneiform tablets from Babylonia, Hebrew from Judaea

Its goal is not simply (if it ever was) to produce a political narrative; issues, such as economic activity, gender, ethnicity and cultural change, are at the forefront of current historical investigations; yet the emphasis on the importance of historical texts remains.

over-emphasis on the Greek at the expense of what is more regional.

Its extent and nature have been the subject of considerable debate: in which direction did influence go? Or did Greeks and non-Greeks remain largely separate? What did it mean anyway to be Greek? What was the relationship between immigrant and native, between town and country? To what extent did non-Greeks, such as Iranians or Egyptians, participate in the royal administration and up to what level?

origins in a political event - the demise of the Persian empire - but that event was to have enormous repercussions beyond politics, repercussions that would not recognize Actium as a boundary.

It is therefore the periods that produce the literary canon that are most studied: Classical Greece (Herodotos, Thucydides, tragedy), Republican Rome (Cicero, Sallust), the Roman Empire (Horace, Vergd, Tacitus).

As Droysen saw, however, the Hellenistic period is as much a cultural phenomenon as a political one

This has had important conse- quences for the study of the Hellenistic world. Whereas Classical literature was valued and preserved, its post-Alexander counterpart has survived only very poorly. This neglect was to continue until the nineteenth century when Johann-Gustav Droysen virtually invented the Hellenistic period in a series of studies devoted to Alexander and his successors. For him Alexander’s conquests led to a hsion of Greek and Oriental culture that eventually gave Christianity the opportunity to flourish.

This way of thinking about the past was not limited to Romans; Greeks of the early empire would often by-pass their Hellenistic ancestors and look for inspiration to the Classical period

Nonetheless, the dismissive outlook evident in the story reflects a general and continuing neglect of the Greek world after Alexander. From antiquity onwards this has been seen as a period of decline, both political and cultural

Here, as the dead Alexander lies before the new ruler of the world, the beginning and the end of the Hellenistic period meet, Alexander the Macedonian king who changed the East by his conquest of the Persian empire, Augustus the Roman who overthrew the last of the successor king- doms with his occupation of Ptolemaic Egypt. The Ptolemies themselves are of no interest; they are simply written out of history, and with them go the centuries that intervened between Alexander and the coming of Rome. The Roman emperors wanted to look back to the almost myhcal figure of Alexander; they saw themselves as heirs not to the kingdoms that developed out of Alexander’s empire but as the heirs of Alexander himself.

31 BC

After his victory at Actium in 31 BC Augustus pursued his defeated rivals, Antony and Kleopatra, to Alexandria in Egypt. After capturing the city, he soon had the oppor- tunity to view its sights.

One of the few places he is known to have visited during his residence there is the tomb of Alexander the Great.

. Indeed, it is diffi cult to escape the conclu-sion that most of the nuances of these designs were lost on the majority of the coins’ users.

pitch the same message dif-ferently to different social classes: abstract idealism for the wealthy, educated users of high-value coins, pedestrian literalism for the masses carrying small change. Similar calculations might have governed the choice of legends for the coins of Vitellius: political ideals for the upper classes, and social ideals for the lower classes.

semiotic systems that transcended individual media

. But the most regular topical designs were those announcing military victories

The underlying typology, however, was based on a bewildering variety of types and legends, especially on the reverses

republican coinage, characterized by designs that increasingly served to com-memorate the aristocratic families of individual moneyers

Signs of modest self-assertion on the part of the moneyers begin to appear on bronze coins in the fi rst half of the second century BC, but the critical rupture came in 137 BC,

During this fi rst phase of the republican denarius coinage, the identity of the moneyers was normally marked by symbols or by abbreviated versions of their names, but the primary purpose of the designs was to identify the coins as Roman.

Most civic coins include an ethnic identifi er (‘of the Ephesians,’ ‘of the Laodiceans,’ etc.), indicating the minting authority; some also include the names of individuals, mainly local magistrates, indicating, it seems, responsibility for a particular issue.

hese will be considered under the headings of ‘agency’ ( Who ), ‘messages’ ( says what ), ‘medium’ ( in which channel ), ‘audience’ ( to whom ), and ‘impact’ ( with what effect? )

Gold coins were struck exclusively, and silver coins primarily,

bronze and silver coinage

31 BC,

e may refer to the former as the ‘central’ coinage and the latter as ‘local’ coinage.

oins were offi cial documents

monetary utility of coinage, and both refl ect the critical role of the state in produc-ing it.

8 introductionA belief in the spiritual qualities of coinage persists in many forms, such as its burial in votive deposits, people’s claims of communicating with the dead through found coins, the placing of good luck “pennies” in penny loafers, the tossing of money into wishing wells, and the arrangement of bundled coins in feng shui.2

based on ancient legends that the goddess Juno alerted the Romans to approaching dangers.

but the corpse walked out of the morgue and remains very much alive today.

the grounds that rejecting cash payments discriminates against the financially vulnerable.

Nobody thinks cash is going away; even the Bitcoin freaks don’t think cash is going away.”

After all, confidence in cryptocur-rency has already been shaken by the untimely death of one of its champi-ons, Gerald Cotten, CEO of QuadrigaCX, who took to his grave the password to $190 million worth of other people’s money.

Yet, they seem reluctant to think outside the cashbox when naming their creations.

What does the word “coin” mean?

doubt as a legiti-mate exercise of congressional power.

tender the federal government’s first paper currency

In fact, the money he spent for his soda may have saved the Union and kept united the states into which he was born