A MS among the papers of Thomas Birch in the BL (and wrongly attributed to him in the BL catalogue). Its contents align closely with the summary of a dissertation read by Folkes to the Society of Antiquaries on 15 and 22 January 1735/6, and recorded in the Society's minutes (Vol. II, pp. 139-40).
'The manuscript covers Roman, Greek and Jewish coinage, in that order. The Roman section is the longest, accounting for about half of the paper, and the coins are treated, in turn, by metal, silver (ff.1–8v), bronze (ff.8v– 12r), gold (ff.12r–14v), with a coda on late Roman silver (ff.14v–15r). The discussion of Greek coins is ff.15r–21v, and includes a section on what Folkes regarded as Roman coins struck to a Greek standard (ff.20r– 21v).38 The work concludes with a rather shorter account of Jewish coins (ff.21v–23v).
His approach is metrological, starting, much in the long tradition stemming from Budé, with the texts and then moving on to the weights of the actual coins themselves, many of which he had weighed himself. The coins he had weighed are:
- Greek coins: ‘old’ Athens, Rhodes, Sicily, cistophori, Alexander the Great, Lysimachus and the Ptolemies; Roman coins: Republican gold (Palazzi and Medici collections), Republican and early imperial gold, imperial denarii including Nero (where he had noted the weight reduction), gold coins of the 3rd century in the Medici cabinet, and late Roman solidi.
... Folkes does not cite other modern authors very much, although he refers to Orsini and Savot (ff.6r, 20v),40 in both cases to disagree with them.' (Burnett 2020b, pp. 1110-12)
