Refunded Constans Solidus replaced

I see that @Roman Collector posted an apparently earlier example of Laetitia in a thread in Dec. 2020 (see https://www.cointalk.com/threads/faustina-friday-laetitia-left-and-right.371036/) -- appearing on "the very first issues for the young empress Faustina II. . . ., bearing her earliest hairstyle and issued under Antoninus Pius, dat[ing] to AD 147-149." So my aureus may not have been the first coin to use Laetitia in an inscription and/or as a personification, but it was nonetheless one of the first, and the association with Faustina II still holds true.

 

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It's a beautiful and very special coin to be sure. Reading over your first post detailing the birth of Lucilla in relationship to the coin underscores just how much sleuthing is a part of the ancient coin hobby. It seems we're always trying to fit together the pieces of an intricate jigsaw puzzle, even with the most transparent types.

 

@DonnaML

For my interpretation of the LAETITIA type to work, we will probably have to postpone Antoninus' tribunician day by a couple of weeks, until after Lucilla's birthday on 7 March, on the assumption that though Antoninus was adopted by Hadrian and granted proconsular imperium and the tribunician power by the Senate on 25 February 138, as his Vita states, nevertheless he put off actually assuming that power until its bestowal was confirmed by the meeting of his tribunician assembly some weeks later.

We know from the Acts of the Arval Brothers that though Otho was proclaimed Imperator and Augustus immediately after Galba's assassination on 15 January 69, his tribunician assembly did not meet until 28 February, six weeks later. We also know that the rare earliest coins of Lucius Verus as Augustus omitted the title TR P, presumably reflecting a short period after Marcus Aurelius and the Senate made him co-emperor in March 161, but before the meeting of his tribunician assembly a week or two later.

So in 151, the course of events will have been:

Birth of Lucilla, 7 March 151, while Antoninus was still just TR P XIII.

Introduction of the LAETITIA aureus type, for a brief time still with TR P XIII, then continued for a longer time with TR P XIIII, since Antoninus' 14th tribunician day had now arrived.

Unfortunately it seems impossible to convince Roman Collector of the validity of my chronology. He refuses to accept my quite plausible conjecture that the reason Marcus Aurelius renounced his tribunician power in 149-151 must have been because all of his children had died. We know, after all, firstly that Marcus was granted the TR P because of the birth of his and Faustina's first child in 147, secondly that he resumed that power in 151 soon after the introduction of the LAETITIA aureus type which plausibly commemorated Lucilla's birth, and thirdly that Marcus was habitually cautious about accepting new titles or honors, so would have been quite likely to renounce the TR P after his first two children had died, since he had been granted that title specifically for the birth of the first of them. Can there really be any other likely explanation for why Marcus renounced the tribunician power in 149-151?

 

Thanks. So -- leaving aside the issue of Lucilla's birth year -- you no longer believe that, as you concluded in 2014, the minting of the TR P XIII Laetitia, with only one obverse die surviving in two known examples (and a reverse die that matches my TR P XIIII Laetitia) simply reflects an error? That interpretation, as you pointed out back then, obviates the need to push back the tribunician day until after Lucilla's 7 March 151 birth date to account for the supposed minting of TRP XIII Laetitias after she was born.

Regarding Lucilla's birth year, have you read the evidence in Beckmann?

 

Donna,

Postponing Antoninus' tribunician day seems to me more likely than a muled aureus still calling the emperor TR P XIII after 7 March 151.

I have read Beckmann, but he has no real evidence for the year of Lucilla's birth on 7 March, and is unaware of my discovery that Marcus renounced his TR P in 149-151, providing key new evidence about when Lucilla must have been born.

 

That probably makes better sense. It's too easy sometimes to explain things away by saying they were erroneous. It's clear that the change-over must have happened soon after the birth on March 7, given the known survival of only one TR P XIII obverse die for the type, and given the fact that the only known reverse die paired with it continued to be used with the TR P XIIII obverse dies for the type after the change-over. Obviously, it hadn't been worn out yet. One might wonder why they bothered making TRP XIII obverse dies at all with the tribunician date coming up so quickly, but I suppose the occasion was important enough that they would have wanted to celebrate it as soon as possible.

Regarding Beckmann's theory, I confess that I don't have the book, so I can't comment on the strength (or not) of his evidence.

 

And once in a great while, we can even be "serious" in doing so!

 

I cannot comment on the strength of the argument as it isn't a time period that I am steeped in, but here are the basics for anyone interested/curious:

• Aurelius Sestertius RIC 1280 (149 BC) shows Pietas with 2 children, one smaller than the other
• Faustina's aureus RIC 504 (undated) shows 2 children similarly
• Antoninus Pius' Sestertius RIC 857 recalling a sestertius of Drusus (dated 149 BC) shows two extant children (girls). Why two boys are shown? This is explained as merely the result of faithfully replicating the model sestertius of Drusus (the sestertius of Drusus issued depicting his sons) or perhaps the two children depicted as genii.

Then the ordering of the first three female children of Faustina (relies on "eldest living daughter would have married Lucius Verus")

• The first child of Faustina II was born November 30 (Fasti Ostienses)
• Lucilla was born in March 7 (list of holidays from Gortyna Crete)
• Lucilla married Lucius Verus – therefore would have been oldest female child at the time
• Annia Faustina outlived Pius and was alive when Lucilla married Verus – so she was younger than Lucilla
• Domitia Faustina died before Pius and must have died before Lucilla or she would have been oldest daughter

Let's be careful not to get too serious

 

I don't believe the coin depicts two boys. If you look at well-struck examples of the corresponding aurei and the sestertius in question, it's clear that at least one of the children -- if not both -- are wearing the stephane. See, for example, these specimens in the collection of the British Museum:


BMCRE 4, p. 97, 679


BMCRE 4, p.298, 1828

CNG Triton VIII sale:



Not only does the child above the cornucopiae on the right wear a diadem, but the child also looks to be about two years old, whereas the child on the left appears to be a newborn.

I believe the children on this coin are Domitia Faustina, born 30 November 147, and Lucilla, born 7 March, 149.

 

I honestly see only one stephane. So a girl and a boy, perhaps.

 

Maybe as a newborn, she's too young for headgear of any kind.

 

A beautiful looking coin Donna! Laetitia means joy or happiness. I hope your new coin brings you the same.

 

But aren't you sort of engaging in circular reasoning, by assuming that it's a she?

It seems to me that to disprove @curtislclay's argument definitively, one would have to find a coin indisputably dated to 151, showing Faustina (or her divine representation) with three or more living children, at least two of them girls.

 

@Roman Collector

So you still consider it legitimate to date Lucilla's birth to 7 March 149, without refuting my chronology proposing that she cannot have been born before 7 March 151, and without suggesting some other reason for why Marcus apparently renounced his tribunician power in 149-151?

It hardly helps to appeal to earlier scholars who dated Lucilla's birth to 149, since they were all ignorant of my discovery of this gap in Marcus' tenure of the tribunician power and my explanation that it must be due to the deaths of Marcus' first two children.

 

The underlying problem is that our primary sources are extremely incomplete, not only in enumerating the number and dates of her children, but also don't say the reason Marcus may have postponed an advance in tribunician power.

Curtis's theory is possible, to be sure -- as is Levick's and Beckmann's -- but the notion of twin boys born in 149 is absolutely untenable.

 

You and @curtislclay agree on the last point: he refuted the "twin boys" notion in his 2014 Forvm posts, stating that the crossed cornucopiae show an older girl and younger boy, both deceased by AD 150.

 

Indeed, it does! And that's what really matters to me. Regardless of whether the coin was intended to celebrate the birth of Lucilla or a different family event -- something we'll probably never know for sure unless new discoveries are made, whether numismatic or epigraphic. There's something about the coin that strongly appealed to me from the moment I first saw it.

 

From a recent e-mail of mine to Johan van Heesch, the prospective author of the revised RIC volume for the Antonine period:

Yes, I have the original 1990 edition of Kienast’s Kaisertabelle, which makes the same statement: Lucilla born 7 March 149, citing IGRR I 1509.


However, that inscription attests only the day of Lucilla’s birth, 7 March, not the year, which could be 149, 150, or 151.


Not 7 March 148, since Faustina II’s first child was born on 30 Nov. 147, so the second cannot have come before 8-9 months after that. And probably not 152 or later, since we know that Lucilla married L. Verus c. 165 AD, probably being at least 13 years old at the time.


Marcus’ resumption of his TR P in c. spring 151 points strongly towards Lucilla’s having been born on 7 March 151, as Marcus’ only and of course eldest living daughter at the time. Choosing any other year will present the problem of having to discover some other reason why Marcus apparently renounced his TR P from 149 until 151.

 

Please let us know what he says in his response. I find this issue very interesting, even beyond its significance to the interpretation of my new aureus. And, even leaving aside all your points, the depiction of Ceres and Proserpina on its reverse is so new, unusual, and virtually unique in Roman Imperial coinage that, combined with the almost-new usage of the Laetitia legend, I have to believe that it celebrates some event highly significant to the Imperial family. What would fit better than the birth of a daughter after death had taken the family's first two children?

 

Dr. van Heech's response was simply, "OK and thanks for this interesting info!"

I first wrote him about this matter late in 2020, but it was all new to him and he clearly has not yet felt the need to study the evidence and bibliography in detail in order to form his own opinion.