I bought this Septimius Severus denarius today. I need help with its identification. Weight 2.7 gr, Diameter 16 mm. Missing legend. Thanks.
Maridvnvm has the correct attribution. I posted one here but it was wrong. I should have looked more closely at the coin.
I am afraid that I disagree, The style is Rome. Obv:- L SEPT SEV PERT AVG IMP X, Laureate head right Rev:- SALVTI AVGG, Salus seated left, with patera in right hand feeding snake coiled around altar RIC 119A, RSC 641
For some reason the quality control at Rome wasn't great at this stage. Coins from this issue and the couple before are often found on small flans.
Hi. This is no direct answer, only some possible clues for gogili1977.It could be Jupiter seated, holding Victory and sceptre. OR Fortuna, Pax or Indulgentia. Struck in 194 AD ? Sept. Severus ruled 193 - 211 AD.
The honest answer is probably that we don't know but I have a theory. "When the cat's away, the mice will play." Earliest issues from Rome were not too bad but the soon coins were produced with poor quality control. Later coins improved considerably. For much of the time of poor coins, Septimius was away from Rome fighting civil wars and punishing Parthians for backing Pescennius Niger. After that, he campaigned in Africa so he really was not a full time presence in Rome until 204. During much of this period, he relied inappropriately on Gaius Plautianus whose daughter Plautilla was married to Caracalla quite without Caracalla having any interest in the girl. Your IMP X coin dates to 197-198 AD while Septimius was still otherwise occupied. After Septimius was back in town on a regular basis, the coins improved. After Plautianus was executed in early 205, they got a lot better. We don't have records that establish who appointed whom to what duties but the lack of care shown in the coins during this period suggests to me the mint was being operated by officials who did not care in what light Septimius was shown. It seems reasonable that they might have been appointed under Plautianus while Septimius was occupied elsewhere and knew they did not need to do good work. It may be too much to suggest that they were intentionally making Septimius look bad or that they were profiting on the side from doing poor work but I do find interest in the extreme improvement after Septimius returned to in-person control of the city. 'Why' is never a question with easy and certain answers when it comes to ancient history. We can examine evidence and propose theories but we really do not know. For me? I'll blame Plautianus. The late coin below has the same reverse depiction of Salus and her snake but late ones are easy to find relatively well struck on decent flans. There are coins like yours with much better centering but the average piece is a bit small and trashy as you have noted.
Fascinating post. I really appreciated Doug's insights as to quality control at the Roman mint. Although we'll never know for sure, his scenario certainly sounds plausible. Which brings me to two Severans in my collection from the "ugly period" of 197-198 A.D. (if my attributions are correct). Both are IMP X (one for sure, one I am guessing about) and both are on fairly small flans. What puzzles me is the remarkable weight variations. The toned one (right) is 1.78 grams, which would lead me to suspect a "limes" denarius, although the workmanship looks too good for that. Perhaps a fake? The other one (without the tone - left) is the heaviest SS in my collection - 3.44 grams, on a small 15 mm flan. It is a real chunk. This was from eBay, a $4.99 from a seller who said he thought it had been clipped, and was otherwise unsure of its authenticity. For the price I thought it was worth the risk of a phony. Did weights, in addition to quality, vary tremendously when Septimius was away from Rome? Or do I have a couple o' fakes? Photos with my efforts at attribution: Septimius Severus (197-198 A.D.) Rome Mint - Denarius L SEPT SEV PERT AVG IMP X, laureate head right / VICT AVG-G C-OS II P P, Victory walking left, holding wreath in right hand, palm in left. RIC IV 120(c); BMCRE 258; RSC 694. (1.78 grams / 16 mm) Septimius Severus (197-198 A.D.) Rome Mint - Denarius [L SEPT S]EV PERT AVG IMP [X], laureate head right / [PACI AETER]NAE, Pax seated left, holding branch and scepter. RIC 118; RSC 357; BMC 353 (3.44 grams / 15 mm)
I see no reason to doubt them based on the images. I think you may fail to appreciate just how bad things can be when people don't care. Many/most coins of the period were not produced on carefully weighed out flans. The makers did not have accurate electronic scales we buy for $10 and lacked the time to adjust individual flans. They were provided with a weight of metal and told to make a certain number of coins from it. It mattered little if some coins were heavy and some were light as long as each pound of metal produced the right number of coins. I suspect the guys who poured out the metal would develop a feel for how to do it with reasonable accuracy but one useful skill might be to sense when you had been pouring too heavy or light on the first half so you could correct it and come out OK in the end. I might compare this to making a dozen cornbread muffins by pouring batter into twelve muffin tin cups. Some bakers are better at it than others. I always wondered how many Romans on the street paid any attention to the size of the coins they encountered in trade. Did they save back the nice, heavy ones and pay the utilities with the junkers? How many looked at a coin and commented on their fond memories of the Antoninus Pius days when a denarius was a denarius before that cad Commodus started making trash.
Thank you Doug for those insights. I like that muffin metaphor. I too wonder to what extent people of the past paid attention to their coins. Some sources I read seem implausible to me - these sources will state with certainty that when the silver content of the denarius went from 84% under Marcus Aurelius to 80% under Commodus there was instant hoarding of the earlier issues. Gresham's Law as an absolute. I don't buy it - and I don't think hoard evidence supports this either. On the other hand, when you look at an antoninianus of Gordian III compared to one of Aurelian, there is no doubt which one is "good." Thus all those beautiful silvery Gordians that got buried. Marc Antony's legionary denarii circulated for so long because, I suspect, not only because they were somewhat debased, but also because it was such a huge, easily-recognized type. Everybody knew these were a bit "off" and it was pretty easy to separate them out of a handful of coins. People are irrational (I include myself here!) - and they are often very irrational about money. To take a more modern instance, Chinese merchants of the 19th-early-20th century did much trade in the form of foreign crown-sized dollars. These were very carefully examined and often chopmarked. It is often stated that these merchants were scientifically making their choices based on fineness and weight. This is true to some extent, but there were non-rational choices involved as well - for a century or more, a big premium was paid for 8 reales with Charles IV (1791-1811) on the obverse from Mexico. Coins of the exact same fineness and weight of Ferdinand VII (1811-1821) were not nearly as popular and heavily discounted (note the scarcity of chopped Ferdinand VII's compared to Charles IV). Charles IV 8 reales were so popular that British and US firms (and probably Chinese) manufactured them up until the 1930s (according to some theories) - not "bad metal" fakes, but full silver replicas of century-old coins. The profit margin for the Charles IV image was so great it was worth making exact copies (which plague collectors to this day - Coin Comm. Forum has some fascinating threads about this). There is no "rational" reason for this, but plenty of custom, habit, and tradition. I'd bet the Romans did the same. Were Fortuna or Spes reverses kept as lucky charms? Were good emperors similarly selected for jewelry, etc.? Who knows?
Thanks to everyone for very useful information to understand this coin production period in roman history. At first I thought that during the coin production, in the absence of a flans for denarii, they used some remaining flans for silver quinarii. But now I think I brought the wrong assumption.
