A little piece of Roman madness: the sestertius coin
Вставка
- Опубліковано 2 сер 2024
- The sestertius was the main unit of measure for amounts of money under the emperors. But the name had a literal meaning of 'half-third' which was completely obsolete and bore no resemblance to the coin's actual value by then.
I hugely enjoy your channel entries, no matter the subject. Please keep them coming!
Nice to see that more videos are being made about ancient coins! I always find these interesting.
Nothing you teach me is trivial.. it is all fabulous. Thank You so much Guy!!
Nice topic and a great little 'one more thing' at the end. Thanks Guy.
Thank you. Fascinating to me how coins can change in value, but not name. I appreciate your short history lessons.
Fascinating!
Another fascinating video, Guy - thank you. I found it far from trivial to hear what the derivation of our word trivial is!
As always, incredibly interesting and informative. I will say though, that it is very common in all societies up until today to keep using a term long after its initial meaning has passed from our consciousness simply because it just doesn't occur to us to update the word itself. For instance, we now use the word 'decimate' to mean almost completely destroy, but it's real meaning is to eliminate all but a tenth of something (from what I can recall). Indeed, the origins of the names for UK "old money" sometimes fall into that category.
Its a bit like our danish numbering system.
Half3es is 50
3es is 60
Half4es is 70
4es is 80
Half5es is 90
Super practical and uterly confusing for everyone else than a dane :-)
Thanks Guy. Always interesting to those of us with a deep interest in all things Roman.
Interesting as always Guy, Something Ive always wondered is did Britons join the Roman army and serve in legions in the Empire?
of course they did. There are several units (from company up to battalion) known by inscriptions called "numerus [unit of the] Brittones". Those units served as auxiliary forces for example in Germany guarding the Limes (the border wall betweetn the roman empire and the wild barbarian part of germany/central europe). These units were raised in the second half of the first century, just after Rome occupied Britain and were auxiliary units in lack of having all civil rights as "full roman citizen". But they proudly kept "Brittones" (from Britain) in their name until the 3rd/4th century, when roman border defence in Germany finally collapsed. (and all those smaller units vanished away out of literal records as well as inscriptions) Joining the regular roman army as legionaires would appear after the roman control of Britain was assembled (1st centuryAD) and as the romano-british population got full citizen with all rights, even after 212AD (when full citizenship was granted to all adult males in all provinces of the empire by emperor Caracalla). But its harder to track these men identifying them as "british" because they adopted the roman nomenclature. So you hardly find an inscription on an epitaph like "John from Britain lies here, he served in the legion for 14 years", rather than a more common "Julius Lucius"- which gives no indication of his british birth or origin. -- Im sorry for not being Guy who is answering your very question, but I hope I did (more or less^^)
I love these coins, so interesting and attractive. Metal miniatures. Thanks for telling us about it. And I love the linguistic titbit about 'trivia'/'trivial', too!
Oh that is just so exquisite! I just love hearing about the weird ways of words.
Always enjoy your vids. Informative and interesting as always. As for trivial, sometimes the trivial stuff is very interesting stuff.
That was cool!
Fantastic information. Thank you.
Love your video’s Guy👍🏻
Hi, Guy! I received your message but not an email to respond to for some reason! I really enjoyed speaking with you and Rosemary in Gainesville. I hope the rest of your trip was wonderful!
Thanks Guy, very interesting
Numismatics provides a wealth of information. (pun intended)
Thank you. Guy, you could talk about cucumbers and make it interesting!!