Roman over Roman overstrikes in the Late Roman Republic

• Autores: Andrew McCabe
• Localización: Revue belge de numismatique et de sigillographie, ISSN 0774-5885, Nº. 164, 2018, págs. 89-107
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Roman overstrikes have been studied for the last 150 years. Past studies have focused on the restriking of Roman over foreign coins in the second Punic war period. Less attention has been paid to Roman over Roman overstrikes, and where the subject has been discussed the focus has generally been on arranging coins into an assumed hypothetical monetary scheme. Almost no attention has been paid to overstrikes later than the second Punic war. This paper addresses methodological issues in studying overstrikes and reviews the silver and bronze overstrikes of the second and first centuries BC. A later paper will address second Punic war bronze overstrikes. Reported examples of bronze overstrikes of the second and early first centuries BC have mostly been misread. Only two such overstrikes can be confirmed with certainty in the 150 years between the second Punic wars and the civil wars, and just one systematic case of overstriking has been noted during the civil wars. Likewise, very few silver overstrikes can be confirmed. Most known examples are illustrated in this paper. The few known overstrikes from the second and first centuries BC were likely the result of specific circumstances that perhaps breached policy. It seems the Romans lost their appetite for overstriking coins of any sort after the second Punic war.