SICILY PANORMOS bronze minor 241 BC

Description

The first picture is artificially lightened and sharpened to bring out the Janus head design.

Quaestors were Roman officials charged with looking into things. In relation to coinage, which, at the time, was the medium of finance, the appearance of his name guaranteed the value of the coin.

Panormos was ancient Palermo. Founded by Phoenicians in the 8th century BC, it was allied with Carthage. The Romans got it in 254 BC.

We think that our culture grew out of the culture of Greece because it was in Greece (and in China) that people started thinking about how things could be different than they were in a world where everything was dangerous and might made right. They also established principles of artistic expression that we still use today. We see this approach to art in their coins.

Ancient Coins includes Greek and Roman coins and those of neighbors and successors, geographically from Morocco and Spain all the way to Afghanistan. Date ranges for these begin with the world’s earliest coins of the 8th century BC to, in an extreme case, the end of Byzantine Empire, 1453 AD.