Mesembria, originally a Thracian settlement known as Menebria, became a Greek colony when settled by Dorians from Megara at the beginning of the 6th century BC, and was an important trading centre from then on and a rival of Apollonia (Sozopol).

Remains from the Hellenistic period include the acropolis, a temple of Apollo, and an agora. A wall which formed part of the fortifications can still be seen on the north side of the peninsula.

Bronze and silver coins were minted in the city from the 5th century BC and gold coins from the 3rd century BC. The town fell under Roman rule in 71 BC, yet continued to enjoy privileges such as the right to mint its own coinage.

It is now the city of Nesebar in Bulgaria. If you're European you might know it better as the city just south of Sunny Beach.

I don't actually remember when I bought this coins, but I've always really liked the design. The Crested Helmet is, of course, one of the most recognizable ancient Greek symbols, and I also like the symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing reverse with MEΣΑ inside the spokes of a wheel.

Bios:Megafauna starts where the predecessor game Bios:Genesis left off, with the invasion of the land on the daybreak of the Phanerozoic eon. Starting as either a plant, mollusk, insect, or vertebral skeletal type, your flapping, paddling, and squawking carnivores and herbivores make a beachhead on one of the drifting continental plates in the Cambrian, Their struggle for terrestrial dominance may eventually include language-based consciousness. Although this achievement elevated a certain mammal species to notoriety, in your game things may occur differently.

This second edition of Bios:Megafauna is an evolutionary descendant of American Megafauna but as a part of the Bios series of games it is linked to the game Bios:Genesis. It plays well independently but if you have both games you can let the end state of a game of Bios:Genesis affect the starting state of a game of Bios:Megafauna. A successor game, called Bios:Origins (which would be a descendant of Origin), is planned to cover the events of the Quaternary period including the rise of ideas and technology.

This is a fine little bronze issue struck in Antioch in modern day Syria under Flavius Delmatius, a Caesar of the Roman Empire and member of the Constantinian dynasty.

Delmatius was the nephew of Constantine I. His father, also named Flavius Delmatius, was the half-brother of Constantine and served as censor. He was the brother of Hannibalianus.

On 18 September 335, Delmatius the younger was raised to the rank of Caesar, with the control of Thracia, Achaea and Macedonia. He died in late summer 337, killed by his own soldiers. It is possible that his death was related to the purge that hit the imperial family at the death of Constantine, and organized by Constantius II with the aim of removing any possible claimant to imperial power other than the sons of the late emperor.

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Obverse: FL DELMATIVS NOB C

Reverse: GLORIA EXCERCITVS, two soldiers standing facing each other, each resting on spear and shield, a standard between them

15mm and 1.35g

Obverse: IMP CM Q TRAIANVS DECIVS AVG, cuirassed bust with radiate head right

Reverse: DACIA , Dacia standing left, holding draco standart

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I have a couple of these silver coins celebrating the (re)conquest of Dacia, modern day Romania, under Trajan Decius.

Dacia had been invaded by the Carpi from the 230s and forward, until the Philip I sent Decius to deal with them around 245 AD. He finally stabilized the area around 248 AD, and his troops then acclaimed him emperor.

A short civil war ensued, Philip was killed near Verona in AD 249, and Decius was recognized by the Senate. He would rule for only a couple of years as he and his son were killed by Goths at the Battle of Abritus in 251 AD.

Dacia is holding a so-called Draco-standart, which was apparently a dragon-like battle-standard used by the Dacians. When they attacked on horseback, the flow of air would create a sort of frightening howl. Dacian horsemen were also used in the legions, and famously a company of Dacian horsemen with a Draco-standard were stationed in the UK close to Wales.

Some people believe that the legend of King Arthur the Dragon grew from these Dacian knights being the only law and order around after the Romans left. Who knows, maybe they inspired the Welsh dragon too.

... to post race threads & result threads for at least all WT-races. Does anyone have the skills to run a bot like this?

I often want to throw a quick comment as a race is going on, but creating a race thread or a result thread is a LOT of work and it keeps me from engaging.

I think this is what we need to make this community grow.

This is a follis - at this point in time a small bronze coin with thin silvering - stuck in Thessalonica in Greece in AD 324. 18mm and 3.3g.

Obverse: CONSTANTINVS IVN NOB C, Laureate, draped and cuirassed bust left

Reverse: VOT/·/X in three lines within wreath, TSBVI

I have it noted down as RIC VII 128 - which I suppose is true enough, but RIC (Roman Imperial Coinage) is a reference which few people have actual access to, so many dealers and collectors just accept whichever number is noted down at face value and don't double check :)

VOT X on the reverse refers to a vow to rule for 10 years. In reality, Constantine II was only ruler for 3 years - 337 to 340. This coin was struck when he was 8 years old.

Sappho from Mytilene on Lesbos is probably best known for giving her name to being a lesbian, but in fact wrote not (only) about love between women, but about love in general. In these fragments about the love of a young man, Atthis.

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On Love and Desire (fragments)

I

…..You burn me…..

II

Remembering those things

We did in our youth…

…Many, beautiful things…

III

…Again and again…because those

I care for best, do me

Most harm…

IV

You came, and I was mad for you

And you cooled my mind that burned with longing…

V

Once long ago I loved you, Atthis,

A little graceless child you seemed to me

VI

Nightingale, herald of spring

With a voice of longing….

VII

Eros, again now, the loosener of limbs troubles me,

Bittersweet, sly, uncontrollable creature….

VII

………..but you have forgotten me…

VIII

You and my servant Eros….

IX

Like the sweet-apple reddening high on the branch,

High on the highest, the apple-pickers forgot,

Or not forgotten, but one they couldn’t reach…

X

Neither for me the honey

Nor the honeybee…

XI

Come from heaven, wrapped in a purple cloak…

XII

Of all the stars, the loveliest…

XIII

I spoke to you, Aphrodite, in a dream….

XIV

Yet I am not one who takes joy in wounding,

Mine is a quiet mind….

XV

Like the mountain hyacinth, the purple flower

That shepherds trample to the ground…

XVI

Dear mother, I cannot work the loom

Filled, by Aphrodite, with love for a slender boy…

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The verse measure - the Sapphic stanza - consists of three 11-syllable verses of dactyls (long-short-short) and trochees (short-long) followed by a short five-syllable final verse. What greater honor can there be for a poet than to have a type of verse named after you?

She was one of the 9 poets who were studied in the classical academies for almost 1000 years. Plato, who lived 200 years after Sappho, called her 'the tenth muse', and Horace - 500 years after her death - considered her almost divine.

The poet Catullus, who is still read in our time, became widely famous for his translations of Sappho's poems. Unfortunately for all of us, the vast majority have been lost.

However, in the last 15 years more and more fragments of her poems are coming to light due to new technology for analyzing fragile papyrus fragments. New poems by Sappho are therefore periodically published - approximately 2600 years after they were written. Isn't it wonderful how her poetry can create an emotional connection to a woman who lived before the Romans even got out of bed?

The Coin

The coin is a silver Diobol struck 400-350 BC in Mytilene. 10mm, 1.31g.

Obverse: Laureate head of Apollo right

Reverse: MYTI. Head of Aphrodite or Sappho right; uncertain symbol to left; all within incuse circle

Personally, I find it appropriate that we do not know whether the reverse features one of the greatest love poets of all time - or the god of love she usually invokes in her poems.

Why the orientation issue?

A perspective from coinweek on ancient coin collection, specifically I suppose on choosing a collection focus.

My own collecting is not focused per se, I collect what I find cool. Still, over the years some themes have emmerged:

• I like coins of Philip I the Arab because they are affordable in good grade and have many cool reverses
• I like small greek coins because they often feature interesting gods and other themes and the variety is so great
• I like coins from Rhodes as they feature a rose and generally look nice

I like cabbage, don't judge.

Miletos was a Greek city in the area that was called Ionia in antiquity, and which is today part of Turkey. The ruins can be visited near the village of Balat, which lies approximately halfway between the holiday islands of Samos and Rhodes.

Like so many other cities in the area, Miletos was founded in prehistoric times, when the Greek tribe called the Ionians colonized the area around 1000 BC. The period from around 1100 BC to 800 BC is often called "The Greek Dark Ages" - and it was indeed a dark time following the total collapse of the Mycenaean civilization.

But after darkness comes light, and from 800 BC and henceforth the Greek cities of Anatolia were very successful in at least one thing; they had children and the children survived. It is believed that the population increased by a minimum of 4% each year.

Let's go somewhere nice...

All those people needed a place to live, and for the Greeks the solution was clear; colonization. From the 8th to the 6th century BC the Greek peoples - the Ionians, Dorians, Achaeans & Aeolians - founded thousands of cities around the Mediterranean (Fig. 1).

!GreekColonies

More city-states means more trade, and with more trade comes prosperity. And with prosperity comes the energy and time for other pursuits than toiling for your daily bread.

The birth Thales - and philosophy

And so, in Miletos around 624 BC, Thales was born - a man who can without exaggeration be called one of the most important people who ever lived.

You see, Thales had a theory:

Everything - EVERYTHING - is made of water!

The earth obviously floats on water, and earthquakes are when the earth is moved by waves. Blood is water, and without blood you die, trees are water, because they grow when they are watered. If you burn off gas, it turns into water, and fog condenses into water. Metal is also a type of water, because when it is heated it melts, and water can clearly condense into earth - you could see this in real time when you looked at the river Meander and how the water over the years condensed and created new earth.

To our modern minds, it seems absurd, of course.

But you need to understand that Thales is the first (at least in the Western tradition) to even consider explaining nature without referring to gods and mythology. Who tried to explain nature with nature, so to speak. And he attempted to do this without having a single scientific or philosophical concept at his disposal.

What an intellectual effort

In that sense, he is the first philosopher - and the first scientist. And by the way, he is also considered to be the first Greek mathematician.

The Coin

The coin here is a small 9mm silver coin from Miletos, a diobol, with a roaring lion on the front and a sort of star pattern on the back. It weighs only 1.16 grams.

Obverse: Forepart of lion left, head to right

Reverse: Stellate pattern within incuse square

It was struck somewhere between the end of the 6th and the beginning of the 5th century BC. - that is, while Thales was alive.

SNG Kayhan 462-75

I do most of my macro photography with a Nikon d3300 and an old manual lens, a 55/f3.5 Micro-Nikkor P Auto from 1972.

Currently on holiday with the family in France, came across a coin shop and went in to ask if they had ancient coins (not many do). To my delight they did, although in a fairly middle quality.

Still, it was priced fairly and to reward the guy for pulling out the stuff for me I bought this Philip I antoninianus with a victory reverse for 30 euro.

Put on a lizard and go for an adventure!

Choose your lizard carefully. You can find six different ones scattered across the land, each with its own special ability.

You'll need these abilities as you make your difficult journey through many dangerous places. Carefully hop your way to the top of an active volcano. Surf down a surging river. Swim an underwater lake. Ascend a snowy mountaintop. What kind of strange creatures will you meet? Can you unravel the mysteries of Lizard?

No story today :) Just the coin:

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Obverse: Radiate head of Helios facing slightly right

Reverse: APTEMΩN / P-O, rose with bud to right, hook to left; all within incuse square.

Struck 170-150 BC in Rhodes. Struck to the so-called Plinthophoric standard, under the magistrate Artemon.

13.1mm, 1.16g.

Jenkins 50; SNG Helsinki 658. VF

From the BGG description:

Dominant Species is a game that abstractly recreates a tiny portion of ancient history: the ponderous encroachment of an ice age and what that entails for the living creatures trying to adapt to the slowly-changing earth. Each player will assume the role of one of six major animal classes—mammal, reptile, bird, amphibian, arachnid, or insect. Each begins the game more or less in a state of natural balance in relation to one another. But that won’t last: It is indeed "survival of the fittest".

Through wily action pawn placement, players will strive to become dominant on as many different terrain tiles as possible in order to claim powerful card effects. Players will also want to propagate their individual species in order to earn victory points for their particular animal. Players will be aided in these endeavors via speciation, migration, and adaptation actions, among others.

All of this eventually leads to the end game—the final ascent of the ice age—where the player having accumulated the most victory points will have his animal crowned the Dominant Species.

But somebody better become dominant quickly, because it’s getting mighty cold...

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This is a comparatively simple wargame-like game which runs for about 4 hours. It is one of my favourite games because it is so simple that I can teach it in 12-20 minutes without consulting the rules - yet it's heavy enough to keep you engaged.

You can also play as Lizards :D

If you're not an experienced collector of ancient coins - or not yet a collector at all - finding and buying coins can be a fairly daunting task.

As a new collector you should:

• Avoid Ebay until you're more experienced. It is full of fakes, and positive feedback is meaningless. While you can find good deals there, you won't know them unless you have lots of experience.
• Use only trusted sellers such as those on vcoins or MA-shops . Vcoins is generally more used in the US, MA-shops is often used in Europe - but many sellers are present on both platforms. They typically all offer a lifetime 100% money back guarantee if a coins is found to be fake after they've sold it to you.

Here are some good deals from vcoins to get you started:

Under $30

• This Licinius I follis has a pleasing obverse and reverse and a fair price point.
• This Sasanian drachm of Khusro II is a nice large silver coin of one of the most famous Sasanian kings.
• This Constantine I follis features the popular camp gate reverse.
• This Kyzikos silver hemiobol has a nice stylized lion reverse and is really old, only maybe 150-200 years after the invention of coinage.

$30-50

• This silver diobol from Miletos features a lion mostly on-flan and a really pretty incuse reverse pattern. Also very old :D
• A nice portrait of Aurelian, one of the most overlooked emperors.
• Speaking of portraits, this Gordian III has a nice quality to it.
• A passable Hadrian denarius
• A provincial Augustus from Syria

$50-100

• An evocative portrait of Trajan
• A heavy syrian silver tetradrachm of Trajan Decius
• A lovely Maximinus Thrax
• A decent Philip I antoninianus with an Annona reverse
• A chunky Marcus Aurelius sestertius to hold while you read the Medidations perhaps.

In general, it is important to do a bit of research before making your first purchase, mainly by comparing coins at the same price point and decising which coin looks better to you. Condition is typically more important than rarity, but there's no formal system to classify what looks good to you. In the end, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and you set your own goals :)

... after today he has won stages in four consecutive grand tours: 2 in TdF, 3 in the Vuelta, and one in the Giro.

Diocletian, Roman emperor from 284-305, was born Diocles - a Greek name - in the year 244 in Dalmatia, now the Balkans. Like so many others from the minor nobility he became a soldier - and at the age of 40 he was general of the 'Proctores Domestici', the cavalry unit belonging to the emperor's household.

When the ruling emperor, Carus, was struck by lightning during a campaign against the Persians his two sons Carinus & Numerian inherited the throne. Numerian "mysteriously" died on his way to Rome, and it totally had nothing to do with Diocles being responsible for his safety at all. I swear, total coincidence. He didn't even want to be emperor. But, you know, when the army insists it'd be rude to refuse...

The Battle agains Carinus

Carinus was of course not happy, and he gathered an army and marched against Rome and Diocletian, as he now styled himself. The battle stood at Margus in Moesia (now Serbia), and initially it looked like Carinus' larger and more experienced force would make short work of Diocletian's army. But as they were preparing to flee the unexpected happned; Carinus was killed by one of his bodyguards, as revenge for Carinus seducing his wife.

After this, Diocletian was hailed as emperor by the army which had nearly defeated him.

The Tetrarchy

As emperor, Diocletian was a great reformer. He had (correctly) identified that it was impossible for one man to hold together the vast Roman Empire, which was now both threatened on all fronts and by internal discord.

His solution was not new; he divided power between 2 senior emperors, each with an adopted junior emperor under him. From 286-305 he thus ruled alongside Maximian 'Herculius', with Galerius and Constantius I 'Chlorus' as junior emperors.

And then he abdicated, retired, and moved into a villa in Dalmatia to grow cabbages, a villa which nowadays forms the center of the city of Split in Croatia. Maximian also retired, in Campania south of Rome.

His Final Years

Diocletian is the only emperor of the third and fourth centuries who died a natural death, and he is the only emperor at all who voluntarily abdicated. And that is perhaps the greatest proof of how great a ruler he really was. After 50 years of chaos and civil war under 27 emperors, Diocletian ruled for 21 years before abdicating.

Sadly, his system, the Tetrarchy, collapsed almost immediately. The Roman Empire was again thrown into civil war - and Diocles died sick, tired and broken on December 3rd 311.

The End of Realistic Portraiture on Coins

With Diocletian the era where coins reflect what an emperor looked like in reality is definitely over. Due to hyperinflation, portrait quality had steadily declined as early as under Gallienus, and coins under Carus, Carinus, Numerian and Diocletian have virtually identical portraits. Not even after Diocletian's coinage reform - where this follis is from - are there any attempts to make the emperors look distinct.

In fact, realistic portraits are now a thing of the past for the next thousand years, after which the Renaissance kings begin to look to the rulers of antiquity as models - and to imitate their coins.

The Coin

This coins is a follis, a large coin measuring 28mm and weighing 10 grams. The reverse features the spirit of the Roman people - Genius Populi Romani. It was struck in Heraclea, now the small town of Marmara Ereğlisi in Turkey, about 90km west of Istanbul.

Obverse: IMP C C VAL DIOCLETIAN P F AVG, Laureate bust right

Reverse: GENIO POPVLI ROMANI, Genius standing left, holding patera and cornucopia

RIC VI 19a