QUESTION: Marty, is it true that Thomas Jefferson had a big Roman and Greek assortment of cash? Additionally, will you’ve got any historical cash for presents this season?
HS
ANSWER: Sure, Jefferson had an in depth assortment of historical cash. In April 1805, Jefferson acquired from Nicolai Henrick Weinwich of Copenhagen “a box containing 150. pieces of Roman coin in bronze of different sizes from the reign of Augustus to that of Theodosius.” Two weeks later he forwarded them to the American Philosophical Society, the place they could be “of extra intensive use. I imagine he too like to look at hoards. For Jefferson, these cash weren’t simply curiosities; they have been historic paperwork. He studied them to know the chronology, iconography, and historical past of the traditional world he so admired as I’ve finished. Historical past is revealed from the coinage. Jefferson even wrote about utilizing cash as a instructing instrument for historical past.
Jefferson owned a big assortment of historical Greek and Roman cash. His catalog of the gathering nonetheless exists. Then there was what turned referred to as the “Jefferson Coin” that was a well-known Roman denarius of the emperor Antoninus Pius. It was found in archaeological excavations at Monticello.
One other little know reality is that in 1801, after his election as President, Jefferson offered his intensive library of 6,487 books to the Library of Congress to interchange the books burned by the British in 1814. Whereas the coin assortment was not a part of this sale, his actions display his view of collections as a public useful resource for information.
John Adams additionally collected historical Roman cash, however not as extensively as Jefferson. James Madison and Benjamin Franklin are additionally identified to have collected some historical Roman cash. By far, Jefferson had the biggest assortment.
Sure I’ll put a collection of historical cash collectively. I had hoped to get a small group of the Rubicon denarii of Julius Caesar. The place they used to go for $600, now they’re round $1200. So, I didn’t get that group.
