Manlia Scantilla

Completing my 193AD set, I have now added an entry level Manlia Scantilla sestertius to my collection:


Manlia Scantilla (Augusta, April to June 1, AD 193). Sestertius. 27 mm. 18.1 gm. Rome mint. Obv: MANLIA SCANTILLA AVG. Draped bust right. Rev: IVNO REGINA / S - C. Juno standing left, holding patera and sceptre; to left, peacock standing left, head right. RIC 18a (Didius).

This complements my sestertius of her daughter, Didia Clara:



Slowly but surely, I'm building my one-per-ruler collection.......

Please post yours.

 

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Nice portrait and just enough legend to read her name. Congrats.

 

That's a real beauty right there my man! And Didia Vavavoom! Funny enough, I'm listening to "The decline and fall..." by Gibbon on audible. And was listening to him tell of her husband bidding for the purple at the Pretorian guard gates just this morning!
Here is my humble Manlia. Purchased at FCR's last auction...


MANLIA SCANTILLA
wife of Didius Julianus.
Augusta, 193 AD. Æ
Sestertius (24.70 gm).
Draped bust right / Juno
standing left, holding
patera and sceptre; to
left, peacock standing
left, head right. RIC III
18a smallish squared
=an,darkgreenpatina,sl
grainy,obvportraitisclear!
FormerFRC(AFairbrought $450)

And her old man (I wish I had Didia Clara. Someday I will).



DidiusJulianus
AD 193. AR Denarius Rome
mint. Laureate head right /
RECTOR ORBIS, emperor
standing left, holding globe
and scroll. RIC IV 3; RSC
15. VF, porous.
The reverse of this denarius
portrays Didius Julianus as
master of the world. His
reign lasted just sixty-six
days.

 

Great stuff! And yes, i find the history of 193AD fascinating. The throne auction was an infamous episode in Roman history. I'm surprised Didius hadn't foreseen that the stunt wouldn't end well for him!

 

Apparently, at least according to Gibbon, he did...but only after it was too late. After a long night of partying and games Julianus went to bed but couldn't sleep. He was haunted with thoughts of what the guard had done to a great man like Pertinax! What might they do to him?? Though I take it with a grain of salt, as just earlier that evening he was reported to have scoffed at the militaristic rations Pertinax had laid out for dinner. And opted to have a much more opulent banquet prepared for him and his hangers on.
Nevertheless, not good job security when your predecessor is stabbed to death and beheaded for ruling justly for a mere 86 days.

 

It's a fun exercise to identify which dies were used to strike the coin. Woodward's article is still considered the definitive work on this, though it's unfortunate that not all dies described are illustrated in the plates. Woodward often refers to coins in the British Museum Collection, which are searchable. Between the illustrations, descriptions, and the BMCRE references, I suspect you'll be able to identify the die pairs with which your two coins were struck.

The position of the breaks and the presence or absence of dots between the words in the obverse inscriptions is significant and can help with die identification.

Doing this, for example, allowed me to identify the dies used to strike these sestertii, definitively proving that they were not tooled/faked from Julia Domna coins with similar reverse types:


Manlia Scantilla, wife of Didius Julianus, Augusta, AD 193.
Roman Æ Sestertius; 28.8 mm, 22.62 g, 12 h.
Rome mint, AD 193.
Obv: MANLIA•SCAN-TILLA•AVG, draped bust right.
Rev: IVNO REGINA SC, Juno standing left, holding patera and scepter; to left, peacock at feet, standing left, head turned up.
Refs: RIC 18a; BMCRE 32-36; Cohen 6; RCV 6083; Woodward, Didius, dies 6/-; Banti 2.


Didia Clara, daughter of Didius Julianus and Manlia Scantilla, Augusta, AD 193
Roman Æ Sestertius; 30.5 mm, 21.16 g, 6 h.
Rome, AD 193.
Obv: DIDIA•CLA-RA•AVG, bare-headed and draped bust right.
Rev: HILAR TEMPOR SC, Hilaritas standing, head left, holding palm branch and cornucopiae.
Refs: RIC 20; BMCRE 38-41; Cohen 4; RCV 6087; Woodward, Didius, dies 3/H; Banti 1.
Note: Reverse die-match to BMCRE 41:



I believe our two Didia Clara coins were struck from the same reverse dies, @Greg Heinrich , though quite different obverse dies.

 

Oh wow, very cool information. Thanks for the link to the British Museum site!

 

..nice coins...man, i've never really heard of her or him that i'm aware of till now...

 

99.9% of the population haven't heard of her. It's these obscure Roman rulers that cost the most $.

 

She's beautiful! A lot of women pay thousands of denarii for a nose like that.

 

Indeed! But her daughter Didia Clara was said to be the most beautiful woman in Rome. Good genes I guess!

 

The above is a subject potential owners of a Scantilla would be well advised to study. An advantage of collecting Domna is no one is making her coins out of tooled Scantillas.

 

Hmm so I’ve just been studying a few Scantilla sestertii. Certainly she and Domna share similar hair dos.

I can see the similarities between the Domna and my “Scantilla”. I’m not great at spotting die matches. Is this a die match - thereby condemning my Scantilla as a tooled Domna?

 

Before the visit to the plastic surgeon:

 

Greg's coin was sold last year by Numismatik Naumann:
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=4337979

 

So we’re in agreeance - a tooled Julia Domna?

 

So sold as a Manlia Scantilla then? But it’s not?

 

I am not sure anyone is saying that. ..

But if you are maybe say it more clearly.

 

Well yes, this did cost a lot of money, so I’m keen for a clear opinion whether she’s really Julia Domna with a nose job.

Fortunately I bought this from a decent dealer on Vcoins... so if this is really a Domna, I should raise it.

 

It helps, too, to find die-matches with pedigreed examples:



Numismatica Ars Classica, Auction 106, lot 1574, May 9, 2018. Ex Stack’s December 2001, 223 and Triton IX, 2006, 1503 sales. From the J. F. Sullivan collection.