Featured Roman Provincial Coin Cities-- How many can we cover?

I hope this thread will remain active and we continue to post coins from the missing cities. All the possible cities are listed on a spreadsheet here by TIF:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1E2tZfrXnmQZcb9XAQKHUQCTLOzFUsKeHfHJBfowiAwc/edit#gid=0

She will update it soon with all the cities posted so far. Then it will be easy to tell which cities are still missing and need coins to be added.

 

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I'm running through the entire thread and filling in the spreadsheet (the alphabetical list... the other one needs to be redone entirely).

It's not a simple matter. Sometimes there are spelling variations which cause trouble. Sometimes cities change names over the course of time. Sometimes the only the area/region is known, not the mint city. Nomes coinage of Egypt, for instance. Nomes were administrative districts. For that matter, were the nomes coins struck in those districts, or were they struck in Alexandria and distributed to the nomes? I don't recall reading about that but maybe I forgot. If any of you know the answer to this particular question, I'd appreciate a reference.

The biggest problem is deciding what to include. We could argue the point endlessly but I'm not including Imperial coins from "branch mints" (such as Lugdunum denarii with Latin legends).

Look through your holdings and see if you forgot to post any. Speaking of missing coins, surely @Okidoki has bunches of obscure Hadrians to add? I know he must at least have some Egyptian nomes coins. Speaking of, here's one I forgot to post:


EGYPT, Heliopolite nome. Antoninus Pius
AE drachm, regnal year 8 (CE 144/5)
Obv: laureate bust right
Rev: HΛIOΠOΛEIT; Helios in radiate crown standing left, wearing chiton and himation, holding Mnevis bull in right hand and sceptre in left
Ref: Dattari-Savio pl. 299 #10935 (this coin); Emmett 1820.8, R4
Ex Robert L. Grover Collection of Roman-Egyptian Coinage, previously held by the Art Institute of Chicago; Ex Dattari Collection (Giovanni Dattari, 1853-1923)

By tonight I hope to be done with the initial accounting.

 

It's quite the project, and an awesome thread. Thanks @TIF !

 

Ditto! I'll be bookmarking this thread.

 

The tally is done (drumroll)... the participating members of CoinTalk have shown 215 cities of the approximately 679 ancient cities which had their own coins during times of Roman rule or oversight. That number is highly subjective-- determining what is and what isn't a "Roman provincial coin" was much harder than expected!

In general, I took cues from RPC Online, with a pinch of collector bias . Inclusion criteria:

• Produced in Roman times (Republican through Imperial) in or for a city under some degree of Roman control or agreement;
• Non-Latin legends (there may be exceptions)
• Not just a close copy of a Rome-struck Imperial coin struck at a branch mint

There were many instances in which I wasn't sure how to proceed. For instance, nomes coinage of Egypt. Dattari's book lists a ton of nomes, but those are districts rather than cities. Also, it seems most likely that those "nomes" coins were struck in Alexandria. I went ahead and added the long list of nomes to the spreadsheet although maybe they don't really belong there. The reverse problem is appears for some issues of Severus Alexander and his family. The style of some of those Egyptian tetradrachms suggests Rome as the site of manufacture although in every other respect they are like other Alexandrian tetradrachms of the period.

Some of the cities may be repeated in the spreadsheet. Alliances were made, hyphens used, and generally those cities just didn't hold their names and borders steady for my 21st century convenience . The spreadsheet ended up many more entries than on the source list. When a specific mint city wasn't known, I repeated the region name with "uncertain mint". I did the best I could and am certainly open to corrections and improvements.

There have been some wondrous coins in this thread . Can you imagine amassing almost 700 different cities? What an undertaking that would be! @ancientone appears to be heading that direction. His coins make up the overall majority of those posted in the thread as well as the majority of one-example-only cities. Bravo, @ancientone!

Updated spreadsheet, alphabetical by city. Note that if we showed a city's coin, I put the number "1" in the first column rather than maintaining a count of how many examples were shown. That's because I don't know how to do an automated tally. The "count" function on GoogleDocs didn't work as I expected so I had to resort to the "sum" function .

In the OP I linked two versions of the spreadsheet: the one re-linked above (cities in by alphabet) and one in the traditional order of listing by regions. Forget about that second sheet. It was too difficult to sort it that way (I'm a spreadsheet novice). That sheet will be deleted.

You can copy the alphabetical spreadsheet to your own database program and manipulate it as you see fit.

...

Thank you to all who participated and commented, and please continue to add any "new" cities you may acquire in the future. I'll continue to update the spreadsheet with your additions and corrections. This thread and the spreadsheet will remain a work in progress.

 

I notice from TIF's spreadsheet, EMERITA Spain is not represented, I have a common but interesting As of the city gate. RPC 42, 25mm, 13.1gm. Tiberius

 

Added. Make that 216 cities represented

 

Just found this coin in my old folders. It reads BEROEA on reverse which is now the famous city of Aleppo in Syria. Obverse shows Antoninus Pius heading Left . I have another coin of much better condition but I didn't store it in my folder yet. I noticed that Beroea didn't figure in this thread. Am I right ?

 

Added. 217

 

I forgot there was more than one Apameia!


SYRIA, SELEUCIS & PIERIA, Apameia, AE20, 8.16g, Year 304 = 9/8 BC
Obv: Head of Dionysos right.
Rev: [Α]ΠΑΜΕΩ[Ν]/ΤΗΣ ΙΕΡΑ[Σ] [Κ]ΑΙ ΑΣΥΛΟΥ; ΔΤ; Thyrsos.
RPC 4347, Sear 5870v, Lindgren III 1176.
ex-CNG, Triton VI, January 2003, lot 1563 (part of) the David Freedman collection

Much nicer than RPC plate coin!

 

218

 

Thanks for the data crunching, TIF. 218, eh... looks like it's going to be a work-in-progress for some time to come .

 

TIF: Here's a few more cities you can cross off your list:

Claudius: Philomelium Phrygia



Caracalla: Heraclea Pontica Bythinia



Severus Alexander: Etenna Pisidia

 

Thanks, @Brian Bucklan!

Can you verify the region for your Heracleia Pontica? In my database it is in Bithynia rather than Pisidia.

 

Definitely Bithynia. The old cut and paste error.

 

I just won an Antoninus Pius of Laodicaea ad Mare from @John Anthony 's auction. I see from the spreadsheet that one is already posted so I will not post it. Has a great reverse of Tyche with the city including turreted walls, gateways, and buildings represented on her head. It's a cool coin.

 

If you have a new provincial you love feel free to post it here even if the city has been shown

I was an underbidder on your new coin (not the immediate underbidder). It was a popular target, apparently! Tyche's crown is marvelous.

Noted and added. That makes ~221 cities.

 

Found two more.

Caracalla: Ariassus Pisidia



Gordian III (most likely): Lyrbe Cilicia

 

The Phoenician city of Marathos is a few miles away from Arados. It's current name is " Amreet " in Syria. The city is visited by tourists and archaeologists for its ancient ruins and historical sites. The following appropriate coin has Berenike II on the obverse. Hope it fits..

 

Thanks @TIF

Here is the coin, Antoninus Pius, Laodicaea ad Mare
Obverse: Portrait of AP right
Reverse: Portrait of Tyche left, with city represented on her head