Friday 14 November 2014

Date of the eruption

I just came across the following blog post: The Inconvenient Coin: Dating the Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum. I wasn't going to post this to Blogging Pompeii at first (we're all familiar with the debate!), but then I read one of the comments by David Atherton:

'Richard Abdy of the British Museum examined the coin in question last year when it was part of the BM’s Pompeii exhibit. In his article ‘The Last Coin in Pompeii’ in the 2013 Numismatic Chronicle he concluded the reverse legend actually reads TR P VIIII IMP XIIII COS VII, dating it to July/August 79 AD'.
 I wasn't aware of this article. Has anyone read it yet? If so, what do you think? 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi! Heikki Solin has already proposed the alternate reading of the coin (XIIII instead of XV). He has discussed about it e.g. in a conference at Naples in 2009.

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