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THE EARLIEST (KNOWN) NUMISMATIC WRITER?Tom Fort writes:
Assuming that the remains are those of Pliny the Elder (and that is a huge IF) then we also have the remains of the earliest known numismatic writer. In his The Natural History (written c. AD 77-79) Pliny gives a brief history of Roman coinage. Almost everything that Pliny says is wrong. But he was a principal source for Roman historians and numismatists until the 1950s when Rudi Thomsen's Early Roman Coinage, 3 vols. (Copenhagen, 1957) conclusively demonstrated that Pliny's statements were useless as accurate historical evidence. Nevertheless, his passage is the only source from the ancient world to discuss coinage at any length and it was highly influential in numismatic scholarship for over four centuries during the late mediaeval and modern periods. Thanks! Here's an excerpt from the article. Above I added an imagined portrait of Pliny the Elder from Wikipedia. -Editor
Italian scientists are a few thousand euros and a test tube away from conclusively identifying the body of Pliny the Elder, the Roman polymath, writer and military leader who launched a naval rescue operation to save the people of Pompeii from the deadly eruption of Mt. Vesuvius 2,000 years ago. If successful, the effort would mark the first positive identification of the remains of a high-ranking figure from ancient Rome, highlighting the work of a man who lost his life while leading history's first large-scale rescue operation, and who also wrote one of the world's earliest encyclopedias. The remains now believed to be Pliny's were found more than a century ago. But identifying the body has only recently become feasible, says Andrea Cionci, an art historian and journalist who last week reported the findings in the Italian daily La Stampa. To read the complete article, see: To read an English translation of Pliny, see: Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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