FACES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
Twelve Rulers Beyond Rome and Their Coins
Marco J. RowenPart of Special Volume The Coins of the Ancient World
Twelve faces. Nearly fourteen centuries. One quiet conversation in metal. Long before Rome filled the auction catalogues, the ancient world was already speaking in coins. A Macedonian king put Apollo on gold and made himself Greek. A Bactrian king fought the steppe in a helmet crowned with bull horns. A Parthian called himself friend of the Greeks, in Greek, on silver, while taking apart the last Greek empire in the East. A queen in Alexandria refused to be flattered and kept her sharp profile. A Byzantine emperor kept Christ on the front of the coin and himself on the back. Faces of the Ancient World is a full-color guide to ancient coins beyond Rome. It follows twelve rulers from Philip II of Macedonia to Basil II of Byzantium and reads their power as it survived, pressed into small metal discs that are still legible and still arguing. Greek, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sasanian, Byzantine. Inside this volume: Twelve illustrated chapters on Philip II, Alexander the Great, Lysimachus, Ptolemy I, Antiochus III, Mithridates VI, Eucratides of Bactria, Mithradates I of Parthia, Shapur I of Sasanian Persia, Cleopatra VII, Justinian I, and Basil II. A Reader's Cabinet with twelve coins still findable on today's market, with price ranges in USD and EUR, authenticity warnings, and difficulty levels. An Analytical Register with rulers, key terms, monetary timeline, mints, and dynastic trees. Eighty-four full-color illustrations from open museum collections. The Special Volume opens The Coins of the Ancient World series: the first systematic illustrated companion, written for the general reader, to ancient numismatics beyond Roman coinage. The ancient world is not finished. It still fits in the palm of the hand.
