Hi. I couldn't identify some signs on the reverse of this Roman coin of Emperor Probus. Could you please assist me in this. Thanks.. Charles
Thanks to both of you fellows for your unceasing assistance. I wonder why the exergue hints to Antioch with XXI, and what does the letter S mean ( probably as a mintmark )? Then who are these two persons or gods and what are they holding ? Gently Charles
Emperor standing right, holding sceptre and receiving globe from Jupiter, standing left, holding sceptre.
Here is another reverse of Probus that I've already posted but did not notice the vague and important interpretation of the term XXI. Who could imagine that it could hint to the proportion of silver in it. And that is a mere possibility. Charles
While S sometimes mean secunda (2nd), here it is the Greek letter for 6 in a series that goes A, B, gamma, delta, E, S. Different mints used different systems. Yes, I have a page on that as well. It will not cover every permutation of every issue from every mint but it is a place to start. http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/officina.html Many questions which are answered on my pages. Feel free to read some of them and ask for clarifications so I might be able to make them better. In this case, someone will want to know how you are supposed to know the coin is Antioch. The answer is that one of us looked it up in the standard references and that is where it was found to have been attributed by the scholars of previous generations who studied thousands of coins and worked out the patterns. XXI is what it is but there are still some who prefer to make up their own answers and declare it to be something else. Many 'facts' in numismatics get updated every so often just like the fact that Pluto was a planet when I was in school and plate tectonics had not been accepted by most scientists of the day. Here is a fact: The guys who made these coins did things their way with not the least thought about how much sense it would make to people two millennia later. Some of their mintmarks (among other practices) may seem capricious; others may seem just plain weird. We learn to cope. Evidence: http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/equiti.html http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/code.html
It should be noted that just looking this coin up in the references would not lead you uniquely to Antioch. The references alone might lead you to Cyzicus before Antioch unless you are familiar with the stylistic differences that allow us to differentiate the coins to the appropriate mint.
