Classes Generales Geographiae Numismaticae

Sestini’s Classes generales is an early attempt to arrange ancient civic and royal coinage systematically by geography, peoples, cities, and rulers. It is useful for understanding the classificatory language inherited from Eckhel, for tracing eighteenth-century mint attributions, and for locating the source of older geographical labels that recur in nineteenth-century catalogues. Researchers can also use it to identify collection and bibliographic references attached to coins before more detailed regional corpora existed.

Because the work predates much of the modern archaeological, die-study, and provenance evidence, verify chronology, mint and ruler assignments, legend readings, authenticity, and present specimen locations against current corpora and databases.