I’ve just been reading a Spink auction catalogue for a forthcoming sale of Roman coins. It includes the description” otherwise with an exceptional, sumptuous honey-blue tone
overlying lustrous and largely original fields, all providing a fitting frame for the classic Tiberian visage”. Estimate is £3,000 – £4,000, so I suppose you have to employ the top drawer vocabulary for that class of coin.
You can, of course, find Roman coins for as little as £3 on eBay, but remember that this price is a reflection of the condition and rarity. They are common and they are clapped out and if you have a metal detector you are in with a chance of digging one up. The Romans were very careless about the way they buried them all over the place. They also buried things like the Water Newton Treasure. It’s not, in my mind, as good as a hoard of coins, but it seems to excite museums. We are actually living on the outskirts of the Roman town of Durobrivae and slap bang in the middle of the known pottery kiln area. For more detail, try here.
Silver Britannia coin
That was discovered seven miles from where I’m sitting. But closer than that are the remains of a Roman fortress, a villa, Roman pottery kilns and a cemetery. There are also Saxon and Iron Age sites, and we are slightly under 10 miles from Flag Fen if you fancy something Bronze Age.
Sorry, I’ve rambled off the point. In fact I have lost sight of it and can’t actually remember what it was going to be. I think, as I recall the title, it was going to be about how writing about things, particularly the coins and research, keeps me going and how I hope it will help to avert dementia. Of course, it could have been about how much history is still underfoot I have been thinking about that lately too.
The title? Now there’s a question. Do I offer a translation? If I do, I look condescending, if I don’t, I look elitist, assuming that everyone did Latin at school. In the end, it’s a common enough motto to assume that most people know it. This, of course, is a problem I sometimes have with poetry. I really dislike poems where the poet feels they need to explain with a footnote. If the poem needs a footnote to make it work, it’s a bad poem. Ideally it should work without me knowing all the details, and work even better if I do.
Anyway, that’s what Google’s for.
Pictures are a random selection.
Ruined aisle – Crowland
Always looking for a new motto. Novum dictum quaerens. Thanks for the inspiration! 🏄♂️
🙂 No worries – I’m not sure I’ve been an inspirations before, merely a bad example. 🙂
So glad to see you are up to your same shenanigans, Simon. That coin is quite stunning. Veni vidi vici is the only Latin phrase I know, so you would not have insulted me with a translation. I am glad that Derrick asked and you answered. Otherwise it was Google for me.
How are you doing? Nice to see you back. You just reminded me I’d been meaning to look up the difference between possum and opossum for the last five years, so I just did. 🙂
We have moved. Or, more precisely, we are in the middle of moving. And I retired. And I am going to become a grandfather this summer. Quite a lot has happened in the last couple of years. Just a shame I’m not more energetic. 🙂
Thanks for the links. You have a lot of history underfoot there! Keep on researching and keep the mind active. Plenty of research out there that indicates it does help. Keep moving, too. The body is the temple of the mind.
Not a bad motto to live by. 🙂
That Britannia coin is beautiful.
There is so much to know, so much to do and, to be honest, so much to eat . . . 🙂
You could fill your pockets for pennies in the Newark antique centres. I was so bad at Latin that they moved me to Geography – please translate
While I breathe, I hope 🙂
Thanks a lot.
🙂
I might have to adopt that motto for myself. 😉
It’s a useful all-purpose motto, and not politically divisive. Your Government might not believe in vaccination and climate change but surely even they have to believe in the utility of breathing.
Quercus, you never know what this government is going to believe.
Or what it will believe next week . . .
Right? Sigh.
Don’t let them grind you down Laurie. You still have a lot of good things in your life, and one of them still has an important job to do if the weather reports are accurate!
So true! But with all that’s going on, it is hard to stay cheerful.
🙂
That could easily be my motto in spite of having lived a life of almost constant disappointment about my failure to be any good at anything.
Yes, I find that I do a lot more hoping than achieving.
It is my default mode.
Being hopeful is a good quality, even if it doesn’t always bring success.
Crowland. I saw that when I was in England 52 years ago. I was very impressed.
It’s an interesting place. There is a lot of history in the Fens and though I haven’t been exactly homesick for the last 38 years, it’s good to be home.
I made a mistake – I went to the Fens with Andrew Petcher when I was in England just before the Covid lockdown. He drove me all over the Fens because I wasn’t interested in all the usual touristy places.
They have a great history, even if they do lack the usual hills and stuff that people seem to like.