Featured A Beautifully Toned Liberalitas... but What is she Holding?

Very interesting thread....@Curtisimo.....And that's a nice Liberalitas..
This coin commemorates Pius' fourth largesse distributed to celebrate the marriage of his daughter Faustina II and Marcus Aurelius Caesar in spring 145 AD.






4th Issue 5th Officina...This donative was given to celebrate the arrival of the Royal Family in Rome AD245

 

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I have a strong liking for eastern issues in general and have managed to gather a few Antioch coins of Severus Alexander over the years. For those who care to look there is a lot to be found in these eastern issues.

Obv:- IMP C M AVR SEV ALEXANDER AVG, Laureate, draped and cuirassed bust right
Rev:- LIBERTAS AVG, Aequitas, standing front, head left, holding scales in right hand and cornucopia in left;
Minted in Antioch. A.D. 223.
Reference:– BMC -. RIC -. RSC -.

An oddity mixing the legend and deity.



Obv:– IMP C M AVR SEV ALEXAN AVG, Laureate, draped, cuirassed bust right
Rev:– P M TR P II COS, Fortuna standing left, holding rudder set on globe and cornucopia; star to left
Minted in Antioch, Issue 3, A.D. 223
Reference(s) – RIC IV 268 var (obverse legend, normal legend is C). RSC 237 var (same)

RIC makes mention of a coin of the same type from the previous issue (Issue 2) being known with ALEXAN but I cannot find this in BMCRE. Another example but from a different die pair sold by CNG in 2009



Obv:– IMP C M AVR SEV ALEXAND AVG, Laureate head right
Rev:– VIRVS(sic) AVG, Virtus standing right, holding reversed spear and victory

Unlisted

This reverse type is not known for Antioch

 

Pius

Septimius

Galienus

 

I trust everyone noted that the relief Ryro posted shows the coin dispenser correctly with recesses to accept coins rather than raised dots as shown on coins. It would have been a lot harder to cut dies to show recesses so I understand what they did but it may have contributed to the earlier error calling the thing an abacus. We need to see one being dipped into a bucket of coins.

Severus Alexander also has a reverse showing coins pouring from the cornucopia.


Commodus showed the whole scene on this as. If the coin were mint state, you would see the citizen holding out the fold of his toga.

 

...wow...i can'hardly imagine...

..the sinus Doug....

 

Thank you my friend! Nice Claudius Gothicus!

Ah yes... I should have recognized.

Nice coin @Roman Collector ! I enjoyed your 2018 thread as I do all of your posts. Nice Liberalitas addition!

Indeed! How great would that be to have someone dump 100 mint state denarii into your shirt. Nice rare Liberalitas addition, my friend.

Thanks @LaCointessa ! It’s good to see you

Very nice Sestertius ACH. The portrait is particularly nice.

Well I’m not too disappointed about the abacus. A coin counting device is pretty cool too.

Also, excellent coin as usual, Al. I really like that hue of patina on bronze coins. Great detail and style as well.

Thank you for posting this @Shea19 ! I’m glad to see that others also have envelopes from this collection and it looks like the both of us have an answer thanks to @curtislclay .

I can’t thank you enough for this response Curtis. I should have expected someone named Curtis to be extra knowledgeable and helpful .

I’m happy to have some provenance information to go with this coin and now I can search in Heritage’s sales to see if I can find anything further.

Also thank you for the clarification on the meaning of the type from the eastern mints. The forum is lucky to have you.

That is an interesting coin. I can commiserate with the ancient die engraver. Before I posted the above write up I had to do a read through to make sure I didn’t refer to Liberalitas as Libertas... then I wrote Libertas in the title when I posted it

I have not seen a coin like yours before. It would not surprise me if more exist though, even official coins. Very cool addition.

Since we mentioned her I’ll add my recent Libertas.

Nice coin HWE. I have a similar Viminicium coin but not one with the reverse figure holding a standard like in yours. Interesting and cool.

Thanks for the kind words. That is indeed a beautifully toned denarius you have. A very sharp portrait as well. Hadrians coins are nice on account of the consistently high quality style (to my opinion). My favorite Hadrian has moved past the colorful toning phase and is now a dark tone... which I still like!


Thanks for sharing!

Both great coins Donna but I particularly like Mars reverse. Thanks for the additions!

I knew you were holding out on me man... nice Phillip!

I also like that image that you and @Roman Collector posted. Do either of you know where it comes from?

Thank you for the kind words Mike! Great Sestertii. I don’t have any SA Sestertii but after seeing some of the coin in this thread I might have to look into changing that eventually. Thanks for the additions!

This is a great coin. In my research I read that the Nerva-Antonine era die engravers experimented with the attributes of Liberalitas before settling on the inclusion of the counting board. Yours is a great example of that.

You are too kind my friend. Wow to all that SA examples. You are very good at seeking out quality and style in your collection Q. Thanks for sharing!

 

That’s a beautiful Hadrian denarius, @Gam3rBlake ! The portrait, color and toning are superb.

 

I took the photo of the Liberalitas relief in one of the museums in Italy (Rome or Naples) about 20 years ago.

 

Thanks so much for this information, I appreciate it! I was fortunate to win two other coins from his collection from CNG last year, but those did not include his envelope. He had excellent taste, such a great collection.

 

Great post, Curtis! The best Liberalitas I have is on this dupondius of Trajan Decius.


TRAJAN DECIUS
AE Dupondius. 12.53g, 24.5mm. Rome mint, AD 249-251. RIC 120c (scarce); Cohen 72. O: IMP C M Q TRAIANVS DECIVS AVG, radiate, cuirassed bust right. R: LIBERALITAS AVG, Liberalitas standing front, head to left, holding counting-board in her right hand and cornucopiae with her left; S-C in field.
Ex G.G. Collection

The die engraver of my Gordie III also commiserates. He went with LIBERATAS.


GORDIAN III
AR Antoninianus. 4.02g, 22mm. Rome mint, early AD 239 - early 240. RIC IV 67 var. (reverse legend misspelled LIBERATAS instead of LIBERALITAS, error not recorded in RIC, but cf. Gemini Auction IV (8 Jan 2008) lot 460 for another example from same rev die). O: IMP GORDIANVS PIVS FEL AVG, radiate, draped, cuirassed bust right. R: LIBERATAS (sic!) AVG III, Liberalitas standing front, head left, holding counter in right hand and cornucopiae in left hand.

 

I just got this email from Heritage and it’s funny because it has a Liberalitas on it and that’s what this post is about xD

 

Wow !
That's a winner for sure

Q

 

Thank for the kind words @Spaniard ! That is a great A-Pi example. I like how it spells out the number explicitly. Thanks for sharing.

I only have two eastern mint denarii of Severus Alexander which I show in the OP but I agree that these are interesting coins. I like the distinctive style. All of your examples are great. Thank you for sharing!

All quality examples! Thanks for sharing!

Good point Doug about the raised dots. The confusion is certainly forgivable considering the Arch of Constantine is the only representation of this scene other than on coins that I am aware of. I was happy to have found the scene so clearly depicted at all. Shows how important coins are for reconstructing details of the past.


The coins falling into the toga is a great detail that reinforces the coin representation.

Great coin additions. I like the coins flowing out of the cornucopia example but I am glad the engravers eventually decided on a design that included the counting board. Cornucopias are great but so ubiquitous that a bit of variety adds a lot to the interest for me.

Nice coin @Andres2 !

Thanks for the info. At some point I may have walked right past this and didn’t even notice it. Italy has too many cool things to look at.

Nice coins and great example of a spelling error to go along with Doug’s. Yours looks to be official though which is cool. Kevin from Quality Control strikes again .

Thanks for sharing Z!

That is a very beautiful example with some nice toning. Unfortunate that the dots in the counting board are worn though. Thanks for sharing.

 

The Arch of Constantine relief is extremely interesting: it obviously shows a coin-counting device, a kind of tray the emperor pours into the recipient's toga. But I don't think it is the same object the allegory of Liberalitas holds on coins since the 2nd c. This instrument always has a handle and is always held vertically. There is no handle attached to constantine's tray.
The ritual of the congiarium is best depicted on sestertii of Nero : Near a statue of Minerva (which indicates the scene location, the Atrium Minervae) are 2 platforms, one with the emperor seated on a curule chair, another one with a magistrate on a straight legged seat, probably a quaestor, who gives the money in the extended hand of a recipient accompanied by a child. On the same palform stands a man raising the abacus, turning his head towards it while extending his left arm towards the people, the witnesses. This man was probably a lictor : aurei of Antoninus Pius show this abacus held by a lictor, and there is a lictor standing behind the emperor(s) on Commodus' liberalitas coins. When the monetary type was simplified it was the allegory of Liberalitas who raised the abacus. When she is depicted in the very act of dropping the money into the recipient's toga folds, she does it by pouring her cornucopia, not the square object. All citizens did not recieve the same amount, it was counted considering the size of their family. I suppose a lictor had to show the people how much each citizen was getting by raising the abacus with which his benefit had just been calculated. Things had to be done coram populo in full transparency.

 

I am reading "Herb" on the envelope.
Beautiful coins and excellent thread.

 

First of all I want to apologize for my delayed response to your excellent reply. I have been away from the forum for a few days.

I am glad that you decided to respond and lay out the argument for the abacus attribution. As I said in my OP the main reason I wanted this type was because I believed it to be an abacus and so it is a win-win from my perspective no matter which object it was meant to represent.

I do still think that the counting board theory is the mostly likely explanation both for the OP Liberalitas type as well as the coins you added to the post.

As you say the Nero bronzes are the best example of the scene on coins. There are two designs on his bronzes that I am aware of. One is the type you posted a photo of and the other is slightly different. I think these two coins show different phases of the same process. See below.

The Documentation

I believe that this scene shows the citizen in the first phase of the process which would be documenting the transaction. The citizen approaches the podium and gives account of his name to the figure seated in the middle of the scene. If you look carefully the seated figure is holding something that I believe is a stylus used to mark the name of the citizen. Look carefully at the figure and he appears to be writing on the table instead of handing something to the citizen. The figure with the counting board stands behind and holds up the board to show to all present the amount to be distributed.


Even on the Arch of Constantine we see individuals writing on a scroll or tablet to keep records (top right). It would make sense in order to limit the instances of citizens trying to cheat the system.

The Distribution

I believe the second type shows the second part of the scene, which is the distribution. Here we see a figure next to the emperor at right. On the far left we see the citizen holding out the sinus of his toga. The person holding the counting board extends it over the outstretched sinus, presumably either before or after dumping the coins to show the deed is done. A statue of Minerva is located in the background and appears to also be holding the counting board (edit: actually an owl... see below)! I don’t think the vertical orientation of the board is all that important. It could be just a function of representing a 3D scene on a 2D surface.

As to whether the counting board on the Arch of Constantine has a handle I cannot tell from the images I could find. If anyone else has a higher resolution photo of the scene please share. I think it’s possible that there is a handle and it’s just difficult to tell for sure based on photos and the condition of the relief itself.

I also think that the designs that show Liberalitas emptying coins from a cornucopia are probably experiments during the Nerva Antonine period before the iconography of Liberalitas was full established.

Also welcome to CT! I hope you stick around and join in with more discussions!

Thanks Michael! You are correct it was Herb.

 

Well... I don't have much time to reply. Let's just consider for now another better specimen on the second neronian liberalitas scene, because the one you illustrated had been tooled : the Minerva statue does not hold a square device but an owl, and the square device (an abacus? a counting board?) has a very long handle. I will not forget your interesting hypothesis, but as far as coin types are concerned I still stand to the traditional interpretation, an abacus. I wait for the discovery of a depiction of a counting board with a handle...

 

Wow, some gorgeous sestertii in this thread! Real eye-popping!

I found a very interesting article about the role of imperial women in the Liberalitas coinage, starting with the Eastern mint issue of Julia Domna such as I posted earlier in this thread. It is available here.

Here's my most recently acquired Liberalitas.


Philip I, AD 244-249.
Roman AR antoninianus, 3.22 g, 22.6 mm, 5 h.
Rome, 5th officina, 4th emission, AD 245.
Obv: IMP M IVL PHILIPPVS AVG, radiate, draped and cuirassed bust, right.
Rev: LIBERALITAS AVGG II, Liberalitas standing left, holding counting board and cornucopiae.
Refs: RIC 38c; RSC 87; RCV 8937; Hunter 21.
Notes. This donative was given to celebrate the arrival of the imperial family in Rome in AD 245.

 

@Curtisimo
I was not convinced by Beckmann's article, but I just found good hi-res photographs of the Constantinian liberalitas relief, taken in a full frontal perspective. The emperor is not the only one that distributes money, there are also 4 other booths (2 on the left, 2 on the right) where money is distibuted by officials using the same square device. And most important for me : it is now very clear from these pictures that these square devices do have handles. The emperor is holding it by the handle, we see his fingers. In lateral booths one can see very clearly officials taking money from a chest, holding their device by its handle and empying it in the recipient's toga. Maybe Beckmann should have illustrated his paper with such pictures. Thus, no more problem : you were right and, like you, I now fully accept Beckmann's theory.