Abstract

The Greek tradition of city coinages has long been recognised as an expression of civic identity. Civic coin designs have been regarded as ‘memory theatres’ through which communities represented their past. The proliferation of such designs in the second and third centuries of our era has been taken as evidence for a new interest on the part of the elites in a remote antiquity, and modern scholars have tended to regard these designs as evidence for that past. However, another possibility exists: that these were invented traditions of the Roman period. This lecture will look in detail at some examples from Syria.