Browse Items (299 total)

The story of Medusa as recounted by Ovid, first century BCE, is a sad one. Medusa starts out as a beautiful young maiden whose long, golden hair enticed the god Neptune. She was violated in the temple of Minerva - of course angering the chaste…

We do not know much about Gaius Hosidius Geta, son of Gaius, the individual who minted this coin in 68 BCE. We know that he was a triumvir monetalis, one of the three men in charge of minting coins during the Roman Republic. The boar on the back is…

This coin shows the traditional standard markings of a denarius: Roma on the obverse and the Dioscuri on the reverse. After the next few years, the standard changed to reflect whatever the moneyers cared to feature on their coins.

Constantius was the third son of Constantine the Great. He was in control of the eastern Roman empire while his two brothers struggled for the west. He survived after his brothers had been killed and successfully ruled until 361 CE, when he died on…

Justinian I was commonly known as Justinian the Great. He was the last Roman emperor to speak Latin as a first language and focused on a goal of reuniting the East and West empires. He was an important figure of Late Antiquity and was called by some…

Cybele was associated with Magna Mater, a very old goddess of the Roman pantheon. Shrouded in secrecy and mystery, the worship of this foreign goddess came with the Second Punic War. The Romans feared defeat and sought an oracle, which told them to…

Not much is know about these coins. They both date to the medieval ages and include a cross so are likely from a Christian dominated area.

Henrid VI was the king of the Holy Roman Empire from 1191-1197 CE. He helped suppress rebellion while his father was crusading. He was a successful ruler, marrying the daughter of the king of Sicily, but eventually died in 1197 from malaria.

These coins, from about the same time but of differing weight and size, both show the typical lion facing a bull. This image was the standard design on the earliest Lydian silver coinage, thought by most scholars to be the oldest silver coinage.…

From Rome, Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter