 Thank you very much for the introduction. President, fellows, and guests, it is a particular pleasure to speak about the Enlightenment to you today. Our society itself is a child of the Enlightenment, and indeed some of its fellows have shaped this intellectual movement through their work. More specifically, there was a very strong connection between the Society of Antiquities and the field of study that we will be looking at in greater detail today, in mathematics. In the 18th century, coins of various epochs played a fundamental role in the meetings of fellows, and which we'll see a little later. But let me first set the scene. I propose to do so by analyzing the introduction to the first volume of the first periodical is viewed by our society, archaeology, or miscellaneous tracts relating to antiquity. The text was published anonymously in 1770. But as Hugh Pagan kindly informs me, it may be attributed to the antiquary Richard Gough, who was to become director of the Society in 1771. This introduction contains a value of a historical account of the society's development. But it starts off with more general considerations that help us understand the society's self-conception. At a time when powerful movement of the Enlightenment was about two generations old, which we call, as we take, the 1700 as a starting point. It is, of course, impossible to pinpoint a particular year when the Enlightenment came into being. Its initial phase made it began around 1680. In any case, the opening lines of the introduction are as follows. Quote, the history and antiquities of nations and societies have been objects of inquiry to curious persons in all ages, either to separate falsehood from truth and tradition from evidence, to establish what had probability for its basis, or to explode what rested only on the vanity of the inventors and propagators. Quote, so according to this text, the main goal of antiquarian research is the pursuit of truth. And this may be achieved by looking at the evidence, as opposed to tradition, and by assessing the probability of things. These are not only key terms of Enlightenment's fellowship, but needless to say, evidence and probability have remained fundamental concepts in the sciences and humanities ever since. The next page, we will quote, the arrangement and proper use of facts is history, not a mere narrative taken up random and embellished with quite addiction, but a regular and elaborate inquiry into every ancient record and proof that can elucidate or establish it. For one of these, how large a proportion of history from the creation of the world to the present age remains yet to be sifted by the sagacity of modern criticism. End quote. This passage, the importance of the material evidence, is reiterated. The author talks about ancient record and proof, and he postulates that there has to be a systematic analysis of it because regular and elaborate analysis, sorry, inquiry. The material evidence has to be arranged properly in order to speak to us. These postulates have to be kept in mind for the main topic of this lecture, in mathematics in the 18th century. And it may be mentioned in passing that the author Richard Goff took an active interest in new mathematics. Furthermore, he refers to the sagacity of modern criticism, which is intending testimony to the self-consciousness of the period. We will encounter the current criticism again a little later in a new Islamic context. Finally, the author is confident that, quote, the antiquary will never be deemed an unserved civil member of the community whilst curiosity and love through subsist. And least of all, in an age where every part of science is advancing to perfection, end quote. People were, of course, very well aware that the Enlightenment had brought about something entirely new in intellectual history. And the fellows of the Society of Antiquaries, among them distinguished humanists, were obviously proud of being part of this new movement. The journal Archeologia contains several moments in Islamic papers. But the importance of coins to the society's life during the first 100 years or so of its existence is best illustrated by the mini books. Starting in 1717, 1718, these provide a record both of papers read to the society and of objects exhibited there, the weekly meeting. In 2015, Hugh Faden published an excellent paper about the role of the Society of Antiquaries of London in the advancement of humanistic research during the 18th century. It is based on a careful ferusel of these mini books for the period from 1718 to 1800. And the second part of this article paints, taking the list, the incredible wealth and diversity of coins and medals that were exhibited and discussed by fellows at their meetings. We do not have time to go into details here, but by far the longest entry in Hugh Faden's list, which was organized by exhibit or speaker, is from Martin Folks, president of the Society from 1750 to 1754. He was in most assiduous, contributed on numismatic matters, giving several papers, presenting ancient as well as medieval and modern coins. Among numismatists, he's perhaps best known for his publication on English, gold, and silver coins. Other important numismatic contributors to society's meetings were Charles Coombe, Andrew Colty, Brickerel, Roger Gayden, Samuel Pegg, and most notably William Stuckl. Thus, at the time, when there was no dedicated numismatic society in England, the Society of Antiquaries fulfilled this role as well. In this lecture, I intend to ask two main questions. Firstly, what was new about numismatics in the Enlightenment? As we've heard before, contemporaries were convinced that every part of science was advancing to perfection in the 18th century, but what did that mean for the study of coins? This question needs to be asked because numismatics had a particularly distinguished history by the late 17th and 18th centuries. The study of ancient coins goes back to the 15th century and had become an essential part of the classics since the 16th. It had generated an enormous bibliography by the time the Enlightenment started, around 1700. The claim that every part of science was advancing to perfection leads to my second question. What was the relationship between the study of coins and other fields of research in the age of Enlightenment? What were the similarities in its colourful approach? And were there influences across disciplines? Greek and especially Roman coins are without doubt the best-known class of portable antiquities. Their serial objects were produced in incredible quantities, altogether millions and millions of pieces. Consequently, they've always been found in considerable numbers in the entire Mediterranean, continental Europe and in Britain in post-Ancient times, whether it's stray finds or it's part of hordes, which can number tens of thousands of specimens. The idea to produce systematic catalogue of the different types of ancient coins can be traced back to the mid-16th century, when the Austrian humanist Wolfgang Grazius was the first to announce such a project in 1558, although in the end nothing came of it. His contemporary, Adolf Okko, who was a physician like Grazius, was more successful. Okko concentrated on Roman imperial coins and, starting with Pompeii the Great, published a remarkable listing of coin types. Down to business in times. The book first appeared in 1579. Okko published the second edition in 1601. His work was enormously influential. Two somewhat reworked posthumous editions were published in 1683 and then as late as 1730, about one and a half centuries after the first edition. Okko's work is tangible proof of the human's legacy that humism is in the Enlightenment period has to deal with. Tradition has always been an important fact in the Enlightenment's ecology and humismatics is no exception. But, as we discussed previously, it was to some extent an enemy of Enlightened scholars who set out, quote, to separate falsehood from truth and tradition from evidence, as we've heard before. One aspect that sets in humismatics apart from many other disciplines is the strong influence of collecting on publishing and scholarship. Old coins, by their very nature and small size, lend themselves to being collected. And the study of coinages of the past obviously developed from coin collecting. However, collectors always love to assemble objects that share certain physical characteristics and form series. On this slide, I'm presenting a remarkable example of this approach to collecting. It is the so-called Codex aureus of Emperor Charles VI of Austria, now captain of the Coin Department of the Constantinople Museum in Vienna. This is a precious coin cabinet in the shape of a codex with a manuscript title page bound in purple velvet and decorated with gilt fittings. The title page was dated 1712 and the codex contained exclusively the ancient gold coins of the imperial collection, mainly Roman or even solid. A series running from the late public, so it was minted for example by Sulla, Amphedic Rape and Julius Caesar, down to late antiquity. Similarly, collectors would put together series of for example, Daenerys, standard silver coins of the Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire, or Cisterci, large coins made of brass were introduced under Augustus and were characteristic Roman denomination until the 3rd century AD. It was very popular to collect series of different coins that were struck in the same metal in more of the same signs. And this approach had a direct repercussion on emismatic scholarship and on publication strategies. A good example is furnished by a famous book by Charles Patin, Imperatorum Romanorum Numismata. It was first published in 1671 and re-issued in 1696, thus at the very beginning of the Enlightenment period. The book is relevant in our context because Patin here does not focus on a specific time span of the imperial period or on a specific group of reverses as a historian or historian would do today, perhaps. Though Patin focused on coins ex ere, may be et mimé, far men, on brumses of middle and small module, hence on coins below the value of Cistercius. Thus, his approach is determined not primarily by chronological or typological considerations but by formal criteria, the size and metal of the coins. This choice is evidently influenced by the practice of contemporary coin collection. In French terminology, which were very influential in those days, such series were called suites. And the appeal was the morphological uniformity, in Patin's case, middle-sized and small brumses. Indeed, most of the coins published in his book were from Patin's collection. Patin's value was a large folio, written in Latin, so it was aimed at educated readers and it presented important new scholarship, despite the fact that its approach was dictated by collectors' conventions, not by scholarly considerations. However, coin collecting was so popular by the late 17th century that pocket manuals were in great demand, small books in which laymen could learn about the basics of the discipline. The most successful of these short introductions to any mathematics was first published in 1692 by a French Jesuit, named Louis Jaubert, under the title La Science des Medailles. After the mid-18th century, many reprints and two further editions of this work appeared in French and it was translated into Latin, German, Italian, Spanish and also English. The Indian Judition was prepared by Roger Gayley, the fellow of the society, whom we've already mentioned earlier. His translation appeared in London in 1697, under the title The Knowledge of Medics. Translations into modern languages make the basics of mathematics easily accessible also to less educated collectors. In our context, it is important to note that Jaubert fit the need to structure the enormous mass of different coinages to pass the world for his readership. For this purpose, he distinguished five orders of medicine. Let me quote Gayley's translation. Of these several heads, he refers to the operas of the coins, are found five different orders of medicine, whereof may be composed very curious series. In the first, we may put the series of kings. In the second, that of cities, either Greek or Latin, before or since the foundation of the Roman Empire. In the third, may be raised the Roman consulate of families. In the fourth, the imperial and all that relates to them. In the fifth, the deities, of which we may have very agreeable series, either the simple bust or else in their full proportion. Some heroes and illustrious persons are seen yet preserved on manners. Homer, Pythagoras, and certain Greek and Roman captains. Quote. Hence, at the end of the 17th century, Jaubert attempted to provide a rough classification of the home of ancient coinage. The list is headed by the royal coinages, not by imperial ones, perhaps not only because the coins of kings came from a very early phase onward, but also because Jaubert's manual was written by a loyal subject of the Louis Cateau. Jean-Fois Vaillant, the most famous humismatist of his generation, was an exact contemporary of Jaubert. He was antiquary of the king and supplies the royal collection with large groups facing coins that he acquired during extensive travels in continental Europe, all of the Mediterranean and in the Leban. Vaillant was the most prolific writer. You can see this pile of books being just a small selection of his printed works. Several of them came classic handbooks of his day but continued to be reissued during about one generation after his passing. Perhaps his most successful publication was a work on Roman imperial coinage, first published in 1674, final edition in three volumes. It's the three books, top of the pile, by the way. It appeared in 1743, almost 40 years after Vaillant's death. This work was hugely popular because it was to some extent geared towards coin collectors. Much like in the volume by Patan, as we saw before, external criteria determined its structure. Roman imperial bronze coins and precious metal coins are printed separately, and third volume of the 1743 edition lists extra large pieces as well of Roman imperial medallions. Coin collectors could build their suites using Vaillant's publication as a guidebook, and it was helpful for them to find indications of rarity and extra descriptions of the single times. But apart from this work on Roman imperial coins, Vaillant published successfully on many other series of ancient coins as well. In the Roman republican coinage with two folio volumes in 1703, on the Roman provincial coins with Latin legends, on the Roman provincial coins with Greek legends, as well as on the history and coinage of various Hellenistic instances, colonies, salute kids, as well as the kings of Parthia, Pontus, Osporus and Lithunia. All these books were monographic publications on the single orders and series of ancient coins that had been defined by the 17th century. But Vaillant never attempted a systematic overview. Change of scene. We are in mid-18th century Vienna, where the Holy Roman Embers put together a considerable collection of coins and medals over the centuries. As for ancient coinage, the collection was particularly strong in Roman imperialism, because this was the tradition that only Roman emperors stood in. We have seen the codex aureus of Charles VI who took an active interest in systematic studies. By 1750, the collection had grown to a proportion that necessitated a complete reordering. And in this year, the cabinet was also moved to a new location in the Vienna Hofburg Room. This competent braving shows the new setup of the imperial cabinet. It is taken from a sumptuous catalogue, the ancient coins that was published after the reordering of the collection had been complete in 1755. This work was undertaken by a group of numismatists, headed by one of Vienna's most prominent colours of the day, Jesuit Erasmus Freud. He was a polymath. He taught at the Theresianum an elitist education institution founded by Maria Theresa in 1746. Today, Freud is best known for his numismatic studies, especially on Hellenistic coins. In our context, the Nautiziae animataris is relevant. A textbook on ancient coinage published in the final year of his life, 1758. In this work, Freud proposed a classification scheme for ancient coins that is much more comprehensive than the simplified orders of Jobet. Freud's system seems to have been developed during the process of reordering the imperial coin collection for the catalogue I mentioned a minute ago. This catalogue is organised according to the system. It is not dissimilar to the one present in the Nautiziae animataris. This was an important step forward. Take it in the spirit of the Enlightenment. Freud tried to come up with a detailed structure for the incredible mass of ancient coinage that has come down to this. However, despite his law of attention, classification, Freud proposed, is somewhat wilder. Let me mention just a few points. He kept some of the classes already established by Jobet. For example, the classes of regal coins and the somewhat strange class of coins of famous men and women. In other words, coins featuring interesting heads other than ruler portraits. Further classes of Freudic scheme are defined by or arranged according to forward criteria. Rig coins are ordered alphabetically by a city name. Roman coins are divided by method. Science is an important criterion too, as if larger coins were more important than smaller coins. For the arrangement of Greek and Roman provincial coins, the breakthrough was to be achieved just a few years after Freud had published his textbook. Not in Vienna, but in France. Joseph Pelerin, a higher ranking civil servant, had amassed the largest private collection of ancient coins of the 18th century. Towards the end of his long life he sold it to the French king. Pelerin published selections from his ever-growing collection in the course of 16 years between 1762 and 1778 in the imposing series of ten catalogues. The decisive step taken by Pelerin in the Isoretic area was to group coins from Minz in the same region together in Europe, Asia, Africa and the islands. He no longer ordered coins alphabetically by Minz. Instead, Pelerin adopted a geographical presentation of his materials. Started for Europe in the west with the coinage of Spain. In doing so, Pelerin basically followed the order chosen by the Augustine author Strabo in his geography. Pelerin thereby invented the geographical system that is used in arranging ancient Greek coins to this very day. Often coins produced in geographical proximity share certain features whether technically or typologically. So this arrangement leads to a much better understanding of ancient coin production as a goal is as Pelerin remarked himself in one of his introductory essays. 1774 at a time when Pelerin's catalogues were read and used with great excitement by coin collectors and classicists throughout Europe a new director of the Imperial Collection of Ancient Coins was appointed by Maria Theresa in Vienna. It was Joseph Eckl former Jesuit then in his late thirties a man who was to change the cause of ancient numismatics scholarship forever and he archetyped the numismatists of the Enlightenment. I have the privilege together with a small team to work on Eckl's correspondence scholarly letters that he exchanged with several dozens of classicists numismatists and coin collectors throughout Europe. This material has not been studied before. We are preparing a critical edition with a common good. Our project was developed in the framework of a new international initiative to publish manuscript sources for ancient numismatics from the period 1500 to 1800 called On this slide you can see codecs kept in Vienna into which the letters Eckl had received were bound in the 19th century. As was to be expected these documents shaped new light on Eckl's life and work and one of the letters is particularly momentous in our context. It is a letter written by Eckl to an unknown Italian collie to August 1775 in the second year of his directorship in Vienna containing a full page treatise on the new arrangement of the coin cabinet of the grand Duke of Tuscany in Florence. Animatresiones in metodon, secondum qua nunc di gesto es museo numismaticum Maudi Ducchis. This is an arrangement for which Eckl was in part responsible himself in 1772 and 1773 he was in Italy in a newsletter study and towards the end of his day he spent about five months in Florence completely reorganizing the collection of ancient coins together with the director of the Uffizi Gallery Raimondo Copchi. In their work Eckl and Copchi used the geographical arrangement proposed around for the Greek and Roman provincial coins and a strictly chronological arrangement for the Roman period coins. This hitherto completely unknown letter of 1775 is the founding document of a new era in numismatic scholarly the era of enlightened numismatic classification as one might say formal criteria for the size of the coins the metal in which they were struck did not have a bearing of numismatic arrangement anymore the coins of kings were inserted where they belonged geographically by Eckl as were the coins of heroes and famous men and women in short for the Greek coins Pelerana's system was adopted with modifications and the classification was jettison more or less completely the decision to adopt an innovative classification system created a lot of additional work for Eckl in his capacity as curator of the imperial collection thousands and thousands of coins that Freudly and his colleagues had rearranged according to Freud's system just about 20 years earlier in the early 1750s Eckl documented this reorganization of the collection in a new two-volume catalogue reflecting a new system the Katarivus Musee Kizare was published in 1779 five years after Eckl had taken up this position the fine labels of this copy of the catalogue in a contemporary mind prominent in the future the indications Paris Vryma and Paris Seconda first part was the catalogue of the Greek and Roman provincial coins second catalogue of the Roman republican and imperial coins but in this case Paris 1 and 2 do not only stand for the numbering of the two volumes of the catalogue they also reflect the terminology of Eckl's new system of organizing ancient coinage as mentioned before Erasmus Vryma had used the term classes in his reign acting distance themselves from Vryma to terminology by avoiding this word instead of 15 chances the museumic legacy of the ancient world was divided into two partates in Eckl's reconstruction into the non-Roman coins to be ordered geographically and to Roman coins to be ordered chronologically wherever possible this is a very simple structure from the model point of view it has certain problems it does not allow for the classification of ancient coins from Xun India or China for example and closer to now it is very difficult to fit all the ancient coins as well which were not at the center of Eckl's interest however the system provides a comprehensive and crystal clear framework for the classification of ancient Greek and Roman issues at the time of the publication of his catalogue of ancient coins in the imperial collection in Vienna in the 1770s Eckl had already started writing a new work written in Roman coinage such a general yet at the same time detailed overview had never been produced before in the history of the museumic culture this work was based on his new system of classification which he had devised during his time in Italy it was published in eight quarter volumes in Vienna and the final seven years of Eckl's life between 1792 and 1798 and is universally regarded as his master work as the crowning achievement of Enlightenment numismatics the work was published under the now famous title Doctrina Numorum veteran like the two-volume catalogue of 1779 its structure is symmetric first four volumes cover part one of Eckl's system non-Roman ancient coins and the other four cover part two Roman coins our research on Eckl's correspondence makes it possible to follow his work under Doctrina over the years and we found out that the choice of title was a lost minute decision it is not clear why he changed his mind in 1792 from 1786 onwards Eckl had planned to call his Malcolm Opus as Fricka Numaria instead if he had typed this version the Enlightenment spirit excluding from every single thousands of pages of this work would have been heralded also in the title criticism was of course another watch word of the Enlightenment we encountered at the beginning introduction to the first volume of the archaeology the mention is made of the sagacity of modern criticism the Doctrina de Gaulle veteran made Eckl world famous through critical examination of the evidence he was able to eliminate great many fakes and fantasy pieces that had been marring the reliability of the arithmetic works since the 16th century time of Lazios and Occo by means of Eckl's new arrangement ancient coins as a whole for the first time became fully usable as a source of history and for our dissidents as Eckl's colleagues across Europe immediately recognized consequently the Doctrina became the most influential work in the ancient coinage of all times it summed up the entire previous research and provided the basis and starting point for the studies of Greek and Roman coins for the further extensions in 1901 an esplanade famously called Toujour Notre-Dramère in the historic overview of his Traité Démonique des Romains this medal struck in Vienna in 1837 for the centenary of Etrusperg he's dedicated to them as the founding father of the system of ancient coinage systematic the reverse of the medal picked Minerva the patroness of the art as she crowned one volume of the Doctrina Numero-Meterre this depiction gives an idea of the veneration in which Eckl and his work were held in the 19th century Eckl died in 1798 the most significant victory for him was written by the French natural scientist archaeologist and musicist Oubainoui Mien de Grand Maison who was the keeper of the Cabine des Medailles in Paris from 1795 onwards this victory Mien specifically acknowledged the contribution that Eckl had made to the development of numismatic methodology Mien as a natural scientist underlines that in English translation the method that he introduced into one branch of archaeology just to say numismatics is closely related to scientific method regarding the way in which objects are classified Mien concludes that he is the reformer of the numismatic science as Linnaeus was the science of nature he is the reformer of numismatics just as Linnaeus was the reformer of natural science in view of Mien's background it is easy to see why he came up with this comparison Mien was an enthusiastic supporter of the Linnaeus and one of the principal founders of the short lived Société Linienne de Paris was established in 1787 that ceased to exist in its original form in 1790 it was thus outlived by the Linnaeus Society of London one of our sister societies in the Berlin house by 230 years and counting Mien was not the first to make this comparison between Linnaeus and Echel to be sure maybe traced back to the 1780s in a different and somewhat unclear context however the passage quoted before Dante was responsible for the comparison of gain currency in the 19th century and it was repeated time and again in texts about Echel Linnaeus and Echel were contemporaries the Swedish naturalist was 30 years older and 5, 20 years earlier than the Austrian humismans no direct context between the two men are attested there is no evidence for an immediate impact of Linnaeus' work on Echel but of course they share a common approach on a general level as Mien has compared it on the line either of them set out to systematize a huge body of material thereby providing a new basis for subsequent research the main work of Linnaeus is the Systema Natura first published in 1735 which went through in a few of the 12 editions in the author's lifetime alone the title runs as follows Systema Natura Siebe in a trianatura systematicae proposita per classes, origines, genera et species Echel did not take up the title in his work but contemporaries were quick to coin the term Systema Echeliana this was clearly influenced by the title of Mien's famous book Systema Natura or by the term Systema Echeliana current since the 18th century the earliest prominent attestation of the term Systema Echeliana goes back to Echel's lifetime when in 1797 the Italian numismist Domenico Sestini published a book on Greek coins based on the first four volumes of the premium in what may be a double illusion to Linnaeus and he called his work Classes Generaleis Geographia Numismanticae and indicated in the subtitle he laid out the material according to Echel's arrangement Secondum Systema Echeliana Echel's endeavor to provide an all-encompassing hand for conventional coinage is an enlightening project of excellence as a cornerstone in its field Doctrina may thus be regarded to be on a par not only with Linnaeus' Systema but also for example with Samuel Johnson's dictionary of the English language of 1765 Another great work of the Enlightenment in the field of Classics was of course Johann Joachim Winklmann's enormously influential Wichitsutir Kums this article first published in 1764 in Dresden as we read in the preface the purpose of Winklmann's book was not much different from Echel's Doctrina mainly to provide a systematic overview in true Enlightenment spirit Let me quote the key passage in the English translation by Henry Loire Quote The history of ancient art which I have undertaken to write is not the frontal of ethics but the changes which occurred within them I used the term history in the more extended signification which it has in the Greek language and it is my intention to attempt to present a system Now in German the term Winklmann uses is their divine gift Hence, for ancient art Winklmann's project had a scope similar to that of Echel's for emismatics The history of these artitums was a book that Echel of course knew very well and occasionally cited in Doctrina not always a proof in Winklmann Winklmann used emismatic evidence in his text but did not have expert knowledge on coins so that he often misused coins as sources as Echel's insoriously remarked one passage May however have drawn inspiration from the five periods Winklmann defined in his reconstruction of the chronological development of Greek and Roman art from the beginnings to late antiquity Curiously enough actually opts for five periods as well in his reconstruction of the overall development of Greek and Roman coinage from the invention of coinage in the introduction to volume 1 of the Doctrina Yet there is no real correspondence between his chronological divisions and Winklmann's other than the numerical conformity of the five periods overall nor is there a reference to the issue of the coins in this passage of the Doctrina To conclude Echel's emismatic work must doubtless be understood in the context of many other landmark projects of enlightenment in the classics and beyond At the same time and more generally the creation of the system of Echelianum was very much an undertaking to be generous Thank you very much