A Coin Collection Spanning 2,400 Years of History From Ancient Greece to the Bourbons

Assembled between 1950 and the 1980s, this outstanding collection pays a splendid tribute to the great Mediterranean civilizations from Carthage to Rome via Greece. A historical retrospective in images.

With the sale of over 500 lots of Roman, Greek and French coins dating from antiquity to the modern age, 2,400 years of history are evoked in this collection. And it is surely no coincidence that it came into being during a tragic and historic period in the 20^th century: the Second World War. A Marseille entrepreneur was called up and posted to Algeria. One day, an acquaintance showed him an ancient coin — at the time, a great many could still be found in that country — and it ignited a passion. The young man started buying seriously in 1950. “Only some of his collection is on offer today,” says auctioneer Jean-Baptiste Renart: “the part he passed on to his grandson. It probably represents half of what he owned.” Until the 1980s, the collector — who died a decade ago — was a regular customer in numismatic circles, buying at public auctions and from dealers alike. The major stores on the Rue de Richelieu withheld no secrets from him! His exacting and meticulous standards led him to seek out coins in pristine condition, while his obsession with the Romans inspired him to build up a series of great emperors. But this sale also features some French royal coins, like a double gold Louis with eight Ls and the insignia of Louis XIV (€2,800/€3,500), struck in Paris in 1701, which is a reformed flan (or blank), i.e. a coin struck over an older type of flan: a common act of devaluation used late in the Sun King’s reign to deal with financial problems. France’s history continues with a double gold Louis with a dressed bust of Louis XVI minted in Bordeaux in 1777, estimated at €2,000/€2,800, and one of nine 100-franc gold coins with a laureate head Napoleon III dating from between 1863 and 1869 (€2,000/€2,400 each). In the overall estimate of €600,000/€700,000, supported by numismatists still very present in the market and a rising gold price, the 185 Greek and Roman coins will account for a significant portion.

Greek Colonization

As this collector’s passion began in North Africa, he took a particular interest in the ancient Mediterranean world and Greece’s many colonies. We thus head for Ionia (on the coast of present-day Turkey) with the oldest piece in this selection: a silver half-stater made in Teos, north of Ephesus, in 520-480 BCE, sporting a seated griffin (€200/300). Founded by the Minoans or Mycenaeans, the city of Knidos on the coast of Caria (also in present-day Turkey) was a Dorian colony before coming under Spartan and later Persian rule. It is well-known as the home of Antiquity’s most famous statue: Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Knidos. And in fact, a profile head of the same goddess appears on the obverse of a rare silver “Timoteles, Magistrate” tetradrachm dated 390-300 BC, estimated at €2,000/€3,000. Colonized by the Greeks in the 7^th century BC, Cyrenaica (now in Libya) came under the Ptolemaic dynasty’s control in 322 BC. Its coinage reflects this influence, as witness a gold stater from 323-305 BC depicting a quadriga driven by Nike and, on the reverse, a standing Zeus Ammon holding a patera and a scepter. This has an estimate of €1,500/€2,500. We then follow the coast to what is now Tunisia with a gold trihemistater struck in Carthage in c. 260 BC with an engraved decoration of remarkable quality, featuring the head of Tanit on the obverse and a horse on the reverse, and dominating the estimates at €10,000/€15,000 (see inset). The Carthaginian goddess of fertility is shown in profile wearing a wheat ear wreath, earrings and a necklace on a gold stater dating from 350-320 BC (€2,500/€3,000) or crowned with barley on a large trishekel from 264-241 BC (€4,500/€6,000),“which will be highly sought-after for its rarity, as bronze versions of it are more common,” to quote expert Corinne Rosenbaum.

Roman Emperors in Marching Order

Rome will impose its hegemony through 119 lots, with one great emperor succeeding another. Julius Caesar starts off this triumphant sequence, as the aureus — meaning “gold” in Latin — was created under his rule. Coinage appeared late on in Roman history, at the end of the 4^th century BCE, and only in silver and bronze. It was not until Sulla’s dictatorship that gold coins were minted in 84-83 BCE, and then regularly under Caesar with the aureus. Struck in 44 BCE, this example (€2,500/€3,500) features the veiled head of Vesta and, on the reverse, pontifical instruments (lituus, sacrificial vase and axe). After Caesar’s assassination (44 BCE), Mark Antony and Octavian were allies during the second triumvirate, before facing each other off in Egypt in 31 BCE. Octavian subsequently took the name of Augustus, in 27 BCE. An aureus from 43-33 BCE immortalizes this short period of harmony with their faces in profile, one on each side. Despite its weak strike, it is expected to make €7,000/10,000. It is hard to uphold gender parity in this field, but we should note the presence of an aureus featuring Domitian’s wife Domitia (€5,000/€7,000), and another with the effigy of Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus, from 187 CE (€6,500/€10,000). And how could anyone resist the perfectly engraved profile of Pertinax on an aureus minted in Rome? This was struck between January and March 193 CE — the three months of his short reign. Estimated at €22,000/€25,000, this coin, acquired in Monte Carlo at a sale on December 2 and 3, 1975, still has its original new-minted shine: proof that it has circulated very little. At the same auction, the collector bought an aureus made in Nicomedia between 317 and 324, the few years during which Licinius II was made caesar and then consul, before being murdered in 325, at only 15, on Constantine’s orders. This coin shows his youthful face head-on: an extremely rare position in Roman coins. Estimated at €12,000/€15,000, it is “the only aureus produced during the reign of Licinius II, during which mainly solidi were minted,” says Corinne Rosenbaum. The aureus was permanently replaced by the solidus during Constantine’s reform in 310, which created a monetary system designed to be more stable. This stability, somewhat relative—particularly after the Roman Empire’s division in 395—is evoked by a Ravenna solidus (€3,500/€5,000) with the effigy of John (423-425). He was appointed Western Roman Emperor by local officials against the wishes of Theodosius II, who led an army against him and had him executed during the circus games, when General Aetius and the Huns, rallying to John’s cause, arrived too late to save him. Lastly, another coin bears witness to the fall of the Roman Empire. You will need €100/150 for this tremissis in the name of Zeno struck in Milan, with the effigy of a cuirassed Odoacer (476-491). This emperor was a German warrior, the son of one of Attila’s collaborators, who deposed Romulus Augustulus in 476 and caused the break-up of the Empire, leaving the way open for the Germanic kingdoms. He was in turn assassinated by the highly ambitious Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great. A story that certainly abounds in twists and turns!

Carthaginian coinage

Founded by the Phoenicians in the 9^th century BCE, the city of Carthage gradually gained its independence and established the Punic civilization, becoming one of the foremost trading powers in the Mediterranean basin. Its expansion into North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and Southern Italy was opposed by first the Sicilians and then the Romans, and ended with its defeat in the Third Punic War (146 BCE) and the destruction of the city, which was then incorporated into a new Roman province. In 303, under Diocletian, it became Africa Proconsularis, or Zeugitana. Despite its long period of domination, Carthage was very late in adopting the use of currency. In the 4^th century BCE, the Punic colonies in Sicily issued the first coins in order to pay their troops on site, in a style strongly influenced by the Greek coins then in use. The iconographic model came from Syracuse, particularly the designs of the engravers Euainetos and Kimon. Carthage was inspired by these Siculo-Punic coins. Eager to facilitate trade, it minted its own currency from the middle of the 4^th century BCE, especially as it had an abundance of gold. Like this gold trihemistater with its extraordinarily high-quality engraving, its shekels, didrachms and staters bore the head of the Phoenician fertility goddess Tanit with a wheat ear wreath: iconography that drew inspiration, through cultural syncretism, from the goddess Persephone found on the Syracusan prototype. The other side always featured a horse, like the superbly naturalistic one on the reverse of this coin. An obscure reference, but one that could have originated from Virgil’s Aeneid, which tells how the Phoenician colonists who founded Carthage were summoned by Juno (or Tanit) to start the new colony at the place where a horse’s head was discovered in the ground. A similar trihemistater fetched €29,624 at the sale of the Jean Louis Noisiez collection on November 23, 2023 in Paris (Osenat auction house; Ms. Berthelot-Vinchon).

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