Why did rulers' faces appear on coins?

Course number: C03

Supervised by: Mitsuru Hayama

Beyond the text: 10 exercises · 5 coins · 10 readings · 1 references　How reading times are calculated

You will also understand

• 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.

You can start this course without reading any other course.

Also worth reading, to see the connections (optional)

• Deciphering the Images and Text on Coins
  What you learn: Looking at both faces of a coin, you can point to what lies in each part.
  The text refers to this course in sections 1, 8.

If you want to know more about checking sources (optional)

• Is It Really True? Checking History
  We re-examine the origins of money and famous anecdotes, comparing them with historical records and actual artifacts.

Assessment

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

1. What putting a living face on a coin meant thenOn Roman coinage, Caesar crossed the final line of "depicting a living person." There were precedents, and causality cannot be definitively established.
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. A Living Face Before Caesar — PtolemyThe face of a living king, not a god or a dead person. Precedents existed before Caesar, with an Egyptian king and Persian satraps.
6. The King Who Brought Back the Portrait — Louis XII and the TestonBringing a style seen in Italy back home. The return of the king's realistic face to French coinage began with an import.
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.

• A biography in a single coin　Overview: the world　42 BC　The Birth of a Single Coin
  §2. The scene where the EID MAR denarius was born.
• The Roman Republic　Overview: the world　32–31 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: 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: 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: 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.

• 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.

The books and materials referred to in this course.