Bought this Trajan denarius awhile back, and - like the Domitian denarius I posted about awhile back - I'm only now getting around to working on photos and attribution. I cannot find an exact match on OCRE. It seems to be an obverse legend variant of RIC II 331 - mine spells the emperor's full name in the dative case - 'TRAIANO' rather than the shortened or abbreviated 'TRAIAN' as described in RIC. A small difference, perhaps, but interesting nonetheless. Out of curiosity, at what point does a 'variant' justify its own RIC number? Anyway, the coin itself is not bad, with a good portrait and some really nice toning, especially on the obverse. Less appealing are the areas of delamination. TRAJAN, AD 98-117 AR Denarius (18.73mm, 3.30g, 7h) Struck AD 114. Rome mint Obverse: IMP CAES NER TRAIANO OPTIM AVG GERM DAC, laureate and draped bust of Trajan right Reverse: PARTHICO P M TR P COS VI P P SPQR, Mars, helmeted, advancing right, carrying spear in right hand and holding trophy over shoulder in left RIC II 331 var. (obv. leg.) Attractive gold and rainbow toning with areas of delamination on obverse and reverse. A good portrait, struck in high relief. In my online searches, I was able to find only one coin that matched mine - literally (an obverse die match). This coin sold through Heritage Auction in 2022. Other than that I drew a blank. So, it would seem to be a very rare obverse legend variant. I'm curious, for those who have access to other reference catalogs, is this variant listed anywhere else? Such as Woytek? Thanks! Feel free to post your own rare coin variants, as well.
Nice pick up, lovely portrait. I just checked NotinRic, but there are no entries for Trajan. Good luck
Interesting coin and good catch! I think you would want to check what the print volume of RIC has to say about it, not just OCRE. There is a lot of stuff like this in the print vol. that you won't find on OCRE. Also: I'm not sure if the new edition, RIC II.2 for Trajan is near completion? Woytek is editing it (or did edit it, if it's done?). If it's at all like the new RIC II.1 or RIC II.3, there should be at least some mention of the TRAIANO variation(s). (See also here.) I would be surprised if the old RIC doesn't address it somewhere, at least in footnotes, since British Museum Catalog does. Everything below references the BMCRE vol 3: They don't have your exact type (i.e., with the Virtus reverse), but the BMC Coins of the Roman Empire, Volume 3 (Nerva to Hadrian), refers to this legend variant as an "error" and cites the types in footnotes when there are published examples. Apparently there are a bunch of types with "TRAIANO" on one or two dies where the obverse legend should've been "IMP CAES NER TRAIAN OPTIM AVG GERM DAC," like yours. See for example, BMCRE3 Groups V (pp. 116-120 [add about 200 for digital doc. p. no.]) & VI (pp. 120-). Within that narrow range, the TRAIANO "error" was noted, for example, in footnotes for 595 (Genius Denarius), 602 (Fortuna Denarius), 621 (Sol Aureus), 625 (Sol Denarius), 626 (Felicitas Denarius). (To me, they happened for so many types, it almost sounds like it was more "acceptable engraving variant" than "error," but I'm not the "Keeper of Medals," so not my call!) I think your type would've been BMCRE3 616-620 (on pp. 120-1) if Mattingly had been aware of any specimens in 1936, but you may want to start from scratch & double-check before relying on that.
Continued... RIC II (1926 edition) is organized differently from BMCRE3, which gives a somewhat different impression. [Edited out a misreading of RIC 337's obv. legend (which comes w/ shorter rev. legend)... Hard to keep track of due to the ...TRAIANO OPTIMO... obv. legend as well!] Now that I've looked in the hard copy, I don't see any mention of this particular combination in RIC II at all, as an error or otherwise. (Or in Suarez's ERIC II.)
Thanks! I did not know that the British Museum Catalog was available online like that. Unfortunately I don't have the printed RIC volumes, but I cross-referenced with numerous different auction house listings (as I like to do when using OCRE, just to check the accuracy.) It does seem more like a variant than an error - does the BM give any reasons for thinking it the latter?
In general that works well if you just want to know a catalog number and the coin type is well known. But when the answer is less obvious, there may be no alternative to seeing what the important texts have to say (if anything). Just a question of whether and when it's worth it to spend the time finding and reading the books. BMCRE3 is linked above. It's a bit harder to find a PDF of RIC II. For Woytek (Die Reichsprägung des Kaisers Traianus, 98-117), you probably have to buy it, unless you're lucky and a local university library has it. Of course, you may still not find anything useful, but there's only the one way to know for sure.
I posted this thread on Numis Forums as well and a member pointed out that the variant does have its own listing in Woytek:
Great result! If Woytek gave it its own type in that vol. he probably will in RIC II.2 as well. Until then still not in RIC!
Trajan, AD 98-117 Roman AR denarius; 2.92 gm, 20.1 mm, 7 h Rome, AD 114-117 Obv: IMP CAES NER TRAIANO OPTIMO AVG GER DAC, laureate and draped bust, right Rev: P M TR P COS VI P P S P Q R, Mars walking right with spear and trophy
Ah, yes, the RIC 337, I believe. Here's my example, which I must've picked up about 15 years ago, but didn't record where. (Consigned it once but it came back unsold. I really like this design in general, so now I'm glad it did!) [Sorry - should've been a new post!!!] The entire thread raises one of my favorite topics in ancient coins: categorization processes (or, the social construction of "the type"). At a glance, nicely laid-out volumes like RIC or RPC always give the impression of fixed categories -- as if the boundaries are somehow given to us naturally -- inherent in the coins themselves. But they are not. Someone has to decide. And those decisions are made differently by different people at different times and for different purposes, often with dramatically different results. (If any "natural" category exists, it's the die-pair. But maybe not always; sometimes the mint workers didn't care which went with which.) In general, many fewer "types" existed earlier in the history of numismatics. Two hundred years ago, all of the Trajan COS VI / Mars Denarii above were considered basically the same. In the 1860s, Henri Cohen divided them up some more. In 1926, further with RIC II. But, a decade later, BMCRE3 reduced some types (the same author/editor, Harold Mattingly!). And now, in the past decade or so, a new type has finally been created for the OP coin: "Woytek 566v." Other scholars chop it up differently: for some, TRAIANO vs TRAIAN and OPTIM vs OPTIMO would NOT count as different legends, since they abbreviate the same words. (One author might recognize four obverse types, another just one.) Most would, though, consider mine and @Clavdivs ' rev. different, as it lacks PARTHICO. But such rules -- or relying on inscriptions at all -- can't work for all coins. Many Greek have no inscriptions whatsoever. But once someone studies them, or "someone else" studies them, a coin that was previously common may suddenly become "unique"! (The opposite may also happen: my Samarian Obol was "unique" for its first couple decades above ground until its publication led to the identification of a bunch more ex.) Some mints kept the same inscription while the style of the imagery gradually changed over generations (e.g., the Syracuse Quadriga/Arethusa Tetradrachms, for ~200 years starting c. 485 BCE). Returning to the (Eastern) Roman types, in the Byzantine period the legends became such gibberish that there are dozens of different scrambled legends for the same "type" of Solidus, but no one would think to call most of them different "types" or even "variants" (e.g., Constantine IV Pogonatus, Sear 1154). What about... Legend breaks? Usually they don't "matter," but sometimes they may: Milne (1918 [JSTOR 370158]) argued they were used like control symbols to represent different officinae/workshops at the Alexandria mint (see, e.g., my Gordian III [RPC VII.2 3874, spec. 8] with unusual break for its "type"; there's a forthcoming update for Keith Emmett's book that may break the type up further, but I don't know yet what he'll say about Milne's workshops hypothesis). Or Magistrate (?) names? Some coin "types" come with dozens of different possible magistrate names but otherwise don't vary at all. I've got a few coins that are the only known (or only photographed) example of their magistrate (e.g., the Caria, Myndus Drachm here, among other unica). For me, the question is: To whom, when, and for which purposes does it matter? (Put bluntly, "Who cares?") Or other control symbols? When is it a "type," a "variant," a new "die," or not worth recording at all? There's no one right way to classify them all. Like any social process, defining the boundaries of the types is always a matter of interpretation and practical purpose. Some ways may be better than others, at least for certain purposes. But never fixed.
