The Man Who Put His Face on the Coin

C03　—　Chain of people

The man who put his own living face on a coin.

Supervised by: Mitsuru Hayama　／　Reading time (main text): About 8 min (3,962 characters of text at 500 chars/min; exercises and readings not included)　／　Beyond the text: 10 exercises · 5 coins · 10 readings · 1 references

What this course teaches you to do

• You can explain the meaning of Caesar's portrait from the institutions of the time.
• You can read what the EID MAR denarius was claiming.
• You can explain why the assassin struck coins.
• You can explain the phenomenon that "the worse the coin, the more of it survives."
• Can narrate the lineage of the "living face" by extending it from Ptolemy to the present day.
• Can discuss the choice of the regime that removed the face (the Commonwealth) in contrast with regimes that featured one.

Lessons (8)

1. What putting a living face on a coin meant thenWhat Caesar crossed was the last step: putting a living person on the coin. But the causation cannot be asserted.
2. Why did the assassin strike his own coinA coin carries a claim along with the payment. With the wage, the reason for fighting is handed over too.
3. The worse the coin, the likelier it survivesGood coins are melted, bad ones survive. What we have is not representative of what circulated.
4. The same claim, repeated eighteen centuries laterThe same form repeats. But sameness of form is not sameness of cause — and there the question stands.
5. The Man Who Broke the Rule First — PtolemyThe face of a living king, not a god or the dead. A taboo was broken 260 years before Caesar.
6. The Practitioner of the Lifting of the Ban — Louis XII and the TestonBringing a style seen in Italy to the home country. The lifting of the ban on faces often begins with importation.
7. The Nation That Erased the Face — The Eleven Years of the CommonwealthWhen the king disappears, the coinage changes. The English inscription and the faceless design were in themselves a declaration of revolution.
8. The Modern Face — From Yuan Datou to 3D PortraitsThe face: from a declaration of rule, to a vessel of familiarity, and then to a cornerstone of anti-counterfeiting. The function changes, the power remains.

Readings (10)

• A biography in a single coin　Overview: 2,700 years of the world　42 BC　The Birth of a Single Coin
  §2. The scene where the EID MAR denarius was born.
• The Roman Republic　Overview: 2,700 years of the world　31 BC　Antony's Legionary Coinage
  §3. Check in the original the line "it survived precisely because it was of poor quality."
• The machine and the revolution　Overview: 2,700 years of the world　AD 1804　Paris
  §4. The scene where the same form repeats eighteen centuries later.
• The name of a tribal king　Britain　55 BC and 54 BC　Off the south-east coast of Britain
  Caesar's expedition to Britain. A record of turning back without conquest.
• Hellenism　Overview: 2,700 years of the world　305 BC　Ptolemy's Egypt
  Section 5. Breaking a taboo 260 years before Caesar.
• The gold of the Valois　France　1514–1547　The mint of the kingdom
  Section 6. Liberalization begins with imports. Including a correction to the accepted theory.
• The money of the siege　Britain　1649–1660　London under the Commonwealth
  Section 7. The English inscription of a country that erased the face.
• China　Overview: 2,700 years of the world　AD 1914　The Yuan Shikai Dollar
  Section 8. An instrument of rule gains a nickname——the Yuan Datou.
• Coinage as political advertisement　Italy　44 BC　The mint of Rome
  This is a record of the act of placing a face on a coin, viewed from a procedural standpoint. Please note that the name of the moneyer who created the die, Marcus Mettius, has survived, and ascertain where the line was drawn between being permitted to depict an ancestor and being forbidden to depict oneself.
• The conqueror's silver, the city's bronze　Greece　From 44 BC　Mints of the Colonies
  This is the scene of a portrait crossing over to the provinces. In the ancient Greek city of Corinth, a coin appeared bearing Caesar's laurel-wreathed portrait and a Latin inscription; bronze was chosen for the material, not silver. This distinction reveals the design for governing the provinces.

Assessment

10 exercises in this course (7 check, 0 compare, 3 written). Progress is recorded by self-assessment.

References

• Coinage of the Roman Republic Online (CRRO) — American Numismatic Society / British Museum / Münzkabinett Berlin　Online version of Michael Crawford's "Roman Republican Coinage" (1974). A standard reference for type identification.

Only works and primary sources whose existence has been verified are listed.