Today I’m sharing something pretty strange, at least for me, for a few reasons. I’m sharing not one but two recent pickups, but they’re the same type in terms of catalog numbers and unlike some types where I might argue a single catalog number should be split into multiple, these coins really are duplicates except for the fact they’re from different dies. Normally I will choose the lesser coin and sell it when I have duplicates, but in this case the coins are just too interesting and I don’t mind having two. I didn’t plan to acquire two or anything like that, but after trying for years to acquire a single example of the type and finally succeeding last month at auction, I saw a second example posted on Vcoins that was far too inexpensive to pass up and from a different die pair and in a different obverse style than my first example. I originally shared the “new” Vcoins example with a group of friends hoping that one of them might buy it and save me from myself, but as usual they just encouraged me to go ahead and buy it for myself since it was obvious I liked the coin and it’s not a duplicate if there’s some quantifiable difference, right? So what is it that makes this type so interesting, and why did I consider it so important to find an example of my own? These victoriati come from the Crawford 94 series with ᴎ mintmark below the obverse bust. The choice of ᴎ for a mintmark is interesting and strange on its own in the context of Second Punic War coinage, however this could simply be an artifact of the local use of the Oscan language and alphabet. When you look at the overall obverse style, however, especially on my example from obverse die 10, Jupiter just looks wild. Grueber, discussing BMCRR Italy 242, wrote that “this coin is of almost barbarous workmanship” and while there is a lot of variety between the various victoriatus issues, nothing quite comes close to the wild style of the dies of this type. It gets even weirder than that when you step back from the appearance of the coins themselves and look at how little is actually known about them from hoard and find evidence. Crawford points out(RRC vol 1 p. 24) that all examples known to him except 1(the aforementioned BMCRR Italy 242) come from the Marcianise Hoard(RRCH 90), found in or near the comune of Marcianise in Campania, outside of Naples. Since Crawford wrote that, another hoard of about 40 of these coins came onto the market in the mid-1980s from M&M AG but this hoard was dispersed in trade and no details were recorded about their origins(cf NAC 61, lot 395). Even today while there are a few outliers, the majority of known examples can be traced back either to Marcianise or the M&M hoard, so unlike most other Second Punic War rarities where there have at least been a trickle of new examples coming to market every decade, the population of this type has been largely static for the last few decades, even as multiple hoards of victoriati have been published or re-examined. Adding to the mystery, most examples show little to no actual circulation wear, so not only does the lack of actual find evidence suggest these coins didn’t circulate terribly far, but the evidence seems to suggest these coins didn’t really circulate much at all. As far as the question of “why”, I honestly don’t have a satisfying answer for that, but some attributes of the coins do give us some hints. First, these coins on average have a higher weight standard and while my examples are on the lighter side, the average weight for the type is about 3.4 grams or so, suggesting that this issue is contemporary with the earliest issues of victoriati. While Crawford dates the earliest victoriati and denarii around 211 B.C., Pierluigi Debernardi, among others, have argued that the earliest victoriati should instead be placed a few years earlier. Since the Marcianise hoard suggests a mint in Campania, if this issue were indeed minted closer to 215 BC than Crawford's 211 date, that would place its minting conveniently around the time of the battles of Nola in 216, 215 and 214 BC, when Hannibal’s forces besieged the city of Nola in Campania three separate times, each time being repelled by Roman forces garrisoned in the city led by Marcus Claudius Marcellus. We know that Marcellus had at least enough money there not only to cover his wartime expenses but, as Livy and Plutarch record, to give a gift of 500 silver coins to an influential Nolan resident, Lucius Bantius, who allied with Marcellus. I will not copy his full story here but it is covered both in Livy book 23 chapter 15 and Plutarch's "Life of Marcellus". At any rate, if these coins were, indeed, a siege coinage, it's possible that most of them were used for large payments directly to nearby cities for supplies, and given the Carthaginian presence in the area, these cities may well have quickly melted their payment rather than risk being caught with evidence they had supported the Romans. This theory is, of course, entirely speculation, but given that Schaefer documents 10 obverse and 6 reverse dies, I would not expect the issue to be common but I would expect to see some more finds recorded, especially since the evidence points to a mint in Italy. The complete lack of additional finds, even as researchers have spent the last few decades combing Italian museums for unpublished hoards and those that were not well analyzed when initially reported, really makes it seem like something is different about this issue. As promised, my new-to-me coins: Roman Republic AR Victoriatus(2.78g), Anonymous("ᴎ" series), ca. 211 B.C. Campanian Mint(Perhaps Nola or Nuceria?). Laureate head of Jupiter right; below, ᴎ. Border of dots / Victory standing right, crowning trophy with wreath. ROMA in exergue. Line border. Crawford 94/1; Sydenham 116; Russo RBW 388; BMCRR Italy 242; Schaefer RRDP 94/1 Dies 10/6 Ex Munz Zentrum Rheinland Auktion 194, 15 September 2021, lot 226, ex Fritz Rudolf Künker GmbH & Co. KG auction 97, 7 March 2005, 1082, ex Münzen und Medaillen AG Basel stock circa 1985 Roman Republic AR Victoriatus(3.02g, 15mm), Anonymous("ᴎ" series), ca. 211 B.C. Campanian Mint(Perhaps Nola or Nuceria?). Laureate head of Jupiter right; below, ᴎ. Border of dots / Victory standing right, crowning trophy with wreath. ROMA in exergue. Line border. Crawford 94/1; Sydenham 116; Russo RBW 388(these dies); BMCRR Italy 242; Schaefer RRDP 94/1 Dies 9/4 Ex Praefectus Coins, Vcoins, 2 October 2021, reportedly ex Flavius, eBay, March 2000, ex Münzen und Medaillen AG Basel stock circa 1985 I've also created, a video of the first coin shown above: And finally, a photo that I think shows the sort of interesting differences you only see when comparing dies in-hand. Note how much relatively larger the reverse die is on the left, versus the right. The left coin seems to have a "tight flan" and the right coin seems more complete, but the diameter of the die on the left is actually noticeably larger, something I didn't really appreciate until I both of them arrived and I looked at them side by side. As always, feel free to share anything relevant
WOW.....nice acquisitions @red_spork. That's what fascinates me about ancients and the vast knowledge of the members who contribute to this forum. Every time one thinks one knows about a series, someone comes up with a new variant. Now you've got me hunting for one of these for my collection. Like you, I picked up a handful of Victoriati, different mints, styles and grades, with the intention of selling some so as to reduce my base cost. I would like to hold on to the Fine Style ones and sell the other three but welcome any suggestions:
There are around 65 or so different victoriati identified by Crawford when you count all the varieties he gives separate entries for, and some have a few different styles represented within a single entry, like the one above. Most are pretty common but you could easily spend a lifetime hunting down some of the rarer varieties. They are a fun little series for sure. As far as which ones to sell, I think all your examples are pretty excellent and would agree with keeping the ones marked "fine style" but not so much because they're fine style but because those two seem to be struck better than average for the type. The VB victoriati below them are excellent coins but have the usual slightly off center strike. All are pretty common types especially with the hoard on the market at the moment, but a lot of the hoard coins on the market are badly struck, particularly affecting their reverses, so the examples with really good strikes stand out.
Young is not how I originally thought to describe Jupiter here but it is an apt description especially on obverse die 10. Often on Victoriati he has an older, more stern looking face closer to someone you'd expect to be playing Santa Claus.
Great coin and write up @red_spork . I think the victoriatus denomination is fascinating but unfortunately I have only one example so far. I like your theory about this being a siege coinage. That would be quite fascinating and it might explain the rather unorthodox style to some extent. I haven’t read up on any theories for the start of the victoriatus denomination other than what Crawford has to say in RRC. Is the theory that the victoriatus pre-dates the denarius or is it thought that the denarius was struck earlier that 212-211 BC as well? Here is my one and only victoriatus. Roman Republic Anonymous AR Victoriatus, mint in Sicily, struck ca. 211-208 BC Dia.: 17 mm Wt.: 3.3 g Obv.: Head of Jupiter right Rev.: ROMA; Victory right crowning trophy Ref.: Crawford 70/1, Brinkman Group B
So, for some background, the "traditional" view, at least that in Crawford, is that the quadrigati ended circa 215 BC and the first denarii and victoriati began being minted circa 211 BC, with the first victoriati basically a sort of complementary coinage to the denarii which were seen as the main coinage of the Romans. This of course leaves an odd gap between 215 and 211, during which it appears the Romans continued minting bronze but according to this view no silver. A relatively recent paper by Pierluigi Debernardi and Roberto Lippi titled "When quantification makes a difference: a preliminary attempt to arrange early victoriati by extensive die studies" presented the preliminary results of a very large die study undertaken by the authors to estimate numbers of dies and thus, total numbers of coins produced. What they found was that the earliest issues of victoriati were massive: by their estimate, using Warren Esty's method for estimating total number of dies from a sample, they arrived at an estimate of 5404 dies for the earliest issues of victoriati versus 2289 for the earliest issues of denarii. The authors posit that instead of being complementary, the victoriati were the main coinage of the Romans during these gap years between the last quadrigati and the earliest denarii, and that the victoriati largely ended circa 210 BC as the denarius was really beginning to take hold. I will point out that the authors of this paper were not the first to espouse this point of view but they were the first to really quantify the output and show just how large these issues were, which Crawford had severely underestimated. Personally, I think this is probably the correct view and to me it makes a lot more sense than the very crowded chronology proposed by Crawford. 215-211 were crucial years for the war and I cannot imagine the Romans funded the war with bronzes and existing stocks of quadrigati. The introduction of the heavier denarius of finer silver after the fall of Syracuse and the Roman capture of immense quantities of silver makes sense, but I can't imagine they were able to stop minting silver for any real period of time.
Those are fabulous and interesting coins, and I don't blame you in the least for keeping both, especially given the disparate styles. Very cool! Thanks for posting them. This is a fascinating theory! How does it fit with the alleged concentration of victoriatus finds in southern Italy and southern Gaul, presumably because of their rough equivalence to the contemporary drachm standard? If victoriati were the predominant Roman silver coinage for several years, wouldn't we expect a more widespread distribution? I suppose the concentration of military operations in southern Italy from 215-211 would explain the prevalence of finds there, but why Gaul? Or are the Gaulish finds from separate, later issues? (Probably betraying my ignorance here.) Here's my 44/1 victoriatus, with its odd indeterminacy between skirt and greaves: Earlier you indicated to me that this was probably one of the earlier victoriati. Perhaps I should date it c. 215 now!
I think the Gauls really liked the victoriati and there's evidence suggesting they circulated in Gaul for quite a while after Second Punic War. It's no coincidence that decades after the last actual victoriati were minted, the victoriatus was sort-of revived by minting quinarii with similar types to the victoriati. The minting of these quinarii is believed to be associated with the settlement of Marius's veterans in Gaul, where worn victoriati were still circulating and likely were treated as being worth a quinarius when trading with Romans. Roman Republic AR Quinarius(1.81g, 15mm), C. Egnatuleius, quaestor, 97 B.C., Rome mint. Laureate head of Apollo right; behind C EG[NAT][VL]EI C F Q downwards. Border of dots / Victory left inscribing shield attached to trophy; beside trophy, carnyx; between Victory and trophy, Q; in exergue, ROMA. Border of dots. Crawford 333/1; Sydenham 588; Egnatuleia 1; BMCRR Rome 1076
Thanks, that makes sense. Even worn, the victoriati were presumably heavier than the quinarius you show, but the total silver content would be about the same. I'm pretty convinced the victoriati circulating in southern Italy were largely produced from 215-211, with the denarius supplanting them. Will have to get my hands on the Debernardi & Lippi paper.
