Faces of the Ancient World: Twelve Rulers Beyond Rome and Their Coins (THE COINS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD) - Softcover

Rowen, Marco J.

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798182218184

Publisher: Independently published, 2026

Synopsis

Twelve faces. Nearly fourteen centuries. One quiet conversation in metal.

Long before Rome filled the auction catalogues, the ancient world was already speaking in coins. A Macedonian king put Apollo on gold and made himself Greek. A Bactrian king fought the steppe in a helmet crowned with a bull's horns. A Parthian called himself friend of the Greeks, in Greek, on silver, while taking apart the last Greek empire in the East. A queen in Alexandria refused to be flattered and kept her sharp profile. A Byzantine emperor kept Christ on the front of the coin and himself on the back.

Faces of the Ancient World is a full-color guide to ancient coins beyond Rome. It follows twelve rulers from Philip II of Macedonia to Basil II of Byzantium and reads their power as it survived, pressed into small metal discs that are still legible and still arguing. Greek, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sasanian, Byzantine. Apollo, Heracles, the fire altar, Christ Pantocrator. Each chapter asks the same questions: what did the ruler choose to say in metal, why, and what does the silence around that choice reveal?

Inside this book, you will discover:

• Twelve illustrated chapters on Philip II, Alexander the Great, Lysimachus, Ptolemy I, Antiochus III, Mithridates VI, Eucratides of Bactria, Mithradates I of Parthia, Shapur I of Sasanian Persia, Cleopatra VII, Justinian I and Basil II.
• One architecture for every ruler: a diagnostic profile, a close reading of the coin itself, the inner circle, the uncomfortable truth the coin leaves out, and what still stands today.
• Four worlds in one book: the Greek world, the Hellenistic kingdoms, the frontier of Bactria, Parthia and Persia, and the last heirs in Egypt and Byzantium.
• A Reader's Cabinet: twelve coins you can still find on today's market, each with a technical card, an iconographic reading, where to look, a price range in both USD and EUR, authenticity warnings and a difficulty level from beginner to advanced.
• An Analytical Register: rulers, key terms, a monetary timeline, mints and dynastic trees, for readers who return to the book as a reference.
• 84 full-color illustrations from open museum collections, with a full credit list at the back of the book.

A full-color edition built for reading and for the desk:

• Full-color interior in a 7 x 10 inch format, with a clean, readable layout.
• Coin plates showing obverse and reverse, so you can follow each reading with the coin in front of you.

Perfect for:

• Collectors who want to move beyond Roman coinage with confidence
• History and archaeology readers curious about how kings and queens built an image of power
• Anyone who wants to know what an ancient face on a coin was really saying

This Special Volume belongs to The Coins of the Ancient World series and stands on its own: no Roman background is needed. Written for the general reader and the entry-level collector by Marco J. Rowen, collector and lifelong observer of ancient coinage.

The ancient world is not finished. It still fits in the palm of the hand.

Edition details

• Publisher: Independently published
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798182218184
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 300