Historians of the ancient world depend on the writings of elite historians like Thucydides, Livy, and Josephus, but they consult other sources as well, especially the evidence of material culture. Archaeologists have unearthed cities, fortresses, roads, aqueducts, bridges, pottery, jewelry, sculpture, frescoes, and the minutiae of everyday life. They have also found writing, most often inscribed on stone or written in ink on papyri which were preserved by dry conditions in the desert.
They have also discovered coins, gold, silver and bronze, which are of no small value to scholars. Coins provide the message that the people who issued them wanted to convey. We can read that message in both the images on the coins and the legends (writing). For example, one of the most famous coins of the ancient world reads "Ides of March" and it displays two daggers and the cap of a freed slave. Unmistakably, it advertises the assassination of Julius Caesar, the most famous assassination in history.
