Wednesday, November 10, 2010

A Hadrian coin and Domitians letter to Terentius Maximus


A Hadrianic Sestertius (I am not 100% sure thou, Roman coins are really difficult to deal with unless you know what you are doing), thus minted only some 50 years after the letter cited below.


"Flavius Archippus the philosopher has prevailed with me to give an order that [1]six hundred thousand sesterces be laid out in the purchase of an estate for the support of him and his family, in the neighbourhood of Prusias, his native country. Let this be accordingly done; and place that sum to the account of my benefactions."

1: I would use this letter only with caution. This translation fix the number of Sestertii to 600.000 which seems to correspond with J. Earls, 1751, translation (even thou his edition actually reads fix hundred thoufand fefterces (it seems as if the the letter F is commonly mixed up with the letter S throughout the edition). The translation I normally use at home, however, reads till ett värde av ca 100.000 sesterier (translated by A. Mattsson 1983). It's unfortunately getting even worse when you look at the original Latin at The Latin Library as that edition is either missing a large chunk of the letter or simply rendering alternative tradition - I do not know which it is (even thou I suspect that they have simply miss typed/scanned the passage).

Pliny the Younger - Letters X. 58
Translated by W. Melmoth

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