to the condition of a Roman province.

THE CAESAREAN ERA dates from the victory of Caesar over Pompey at Pharsalia, Aug. 9th, B.C. 48. The city of Antioch, however, reckoned the commencement of the era from the autumn of the preceding year, B.C. 49, and other cities from slightly varying dates.

If the era started before the common era (BC or BCE), to determine the common era (AD or CE) date, subtract the era start year from the date on the coin. If the result is less than zero, determine the date before the common era (BC or BCE) by subtracting the date on the coin from the era start year and then adding one.

If the era started in the common era (AD or CE), add the start year toJapanese director Seijun Suzuki is best known to Western audiences for a pair of brilliant B-movie thrillers which he made for the Nikkatsu corporation back in the 1960s. Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill were racy, psychedelic, pop-art infl ected oddities, which have since been acknowledged as infl uences by everyone from Hong Kong's John Woo and Korea's Park Chan-wook to America's Jim Jarmusch and (inevitably) Quentin Tarantino. Yet Nikkatsu, for whom art was very much a byproduct of exploitation, found the director's approach altogether too experimental. 'They told me my films didn't make money and they didn't make sense,' said Suzuki, who had been churning out an average of four features a year for Nikkatsu. 'So they fired me.'

Today, the octogenarian Suzuki is considered a cult director,