Aurelian unlisted issue of Siscia mint (even in MER/RIC)?

I decided to reevaluate some of my less-attractive Aurelian coins as a result of all the recent Aurelian-related posts on this forum of late.

I found this one in an uncleaned bulk lot. All sources (RIC, MER/RIC, CBN, Sear and MIR) list C* as the mark in the exergue on coins with this reverse type. This one clearly reads S*. Am I missing something?


Aurelian, AD 270-275.
Roman billon antoninianus, 2.82 g, 22.1 mm, 5 h.
Siscia, AD 272 ?
Obv: IMP AVRELIANVS AVG, radiate and cuirassed bust, right.
Rev: VICTORIA AVG, Trophy of arms (helmet l.); on each side, a bound and seated captive in oriental dress; S* in exergue.
Refs: Similar to issue of Cyzicus: RIC 354; MER/RIC temp 2948; CBN 1156; RCV 11621; MIR 321.

At this angle and with different lighting, the officina mark in the exergue is clearly an S:

 

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Since "C" was not an officina mark at any eastern mint, and RIC attributes the C* to Cyzicus, presumably the letter "C" is the mark for the mint. (Could then the star be a series mark?) In that case the letter "S" on your coin takes it out of the realm of Cyzicus.

What flanks the "S" in the exergue of your coin?

 

It must be Siscia, then. I have edited the original post to reflect this. The exergue contains nothing but S* - an S and a star.

 

This is every coin of Aurelian with this reverse in the MER/RIC database.

 

Siscia had crossed my mind too. However, when did the mint activity at Samosata come to an end? They were busy during the reign of Gallienus, but I am not familiar enough with all that to even speculate. However, if you want to stretch a bit, allow me to raise a rather speculative question about the use of the letter "C."

In Latin the "C" and "S" are quite distinct. In modern English we sometimes give the "C" a phonetic value similar to "S." Nice concern. I know of nothing like that in Latin in which the "C" was always hard and more phonetically akin to "K." CAESAR. But in the Greek alphabet of the third century A.D., especially in provincial coin inscriptions, the "C" frequently served as an "S" as in CEBASTE. Could it be that the mintmark C* and your mark S* are intentionally (or inadvertantly) equivalent representing Siscia or Samosata instead of Cyzicus? (Greek: KYZIKOS) We know that in the 4th century the marks for Cyzicus were always rendered with a "K" so a Latin spelling would be a bit exceptional. Of course, things were not so standardized at the time of Aurelian, or so it seems from the diversity of mark forms.

RIC notwithstanding, what is the strength of the evidence that C* represented product from the mint at Cyzicus?

 

I concur. Siscia and Cyzicus are more than 1300 km apart and it's weird the coins are so similar. I wondered myself at perhaps an engraving error because of phonetics.

The only evidence that I have about the mintmarks is what's in RIC and MER/RIC, which attribute the C* to Cyzicus. These five coins are the only coins of Aurelian listed with C* in the exergue and they are all attributed to the Cyzicus mint. Similarly, these seventeen coins are the only coins of Aurelian listed with S* in the exergue and they are all attributed to Siscia.

 

Based on style yours clearly belongs to the same group as the C* coins attributed to Cyzicus. I'd lean towards engraving error.

 

If you look to the left of the "S" at around--assuming the S is at 6:00--7:00, you'll see an artifact on the edge that looks like a bowl, or a C lying down for a little rest. This "Lazy C" is likely just a random result of corrosion/preservation effects on the beaded border.

I think your coin might be a C* after all, but with another weird preservation artifact, the top of which just happened to cover the base of the C, making it look like an S. It looks like the bottom of the S goes all the way down into the border. That seems a little strange.

Do you have a microscope? It looks like there's a tiny little bump about where the lower serif of the C should be that continues into what appears to be the lower half of the S.

 

If we compare the OP coin to this example of a normal C* from Cyzicus:
click

and line them up in parallel:

We can see that the size of the stars is comparable. The letters are in proportion to the size of the stars. If we assume a "C + artifact" for the OP coin (on right) the letter "C" is out of proportion to the star, and does not parallel the example on left for size. Moreover, the proximity of the marks to the engraved border in the coin on left does not allow for the separation we would see in the coin on right if the C were positioned as the proposed artifact suggests. On the other hand, if we read an "S" in that position, then it fits the scale for both height and separation from the raised border.

But if these two are die matched for the reverse, then we are seeing a slightly mistruck "C" in the exergue.

 

The style of the lettering and portraiture and the type are no doubt Cyzicus, from cca. 271-early 272. There seems to be a continuation in types which originated at Smyrna in 268 under Gallienus (the beginning of the SPQR series) and were continued at Cyzicus in early to mid 269 under Claudius II and then on under Quintillus and Aurelian. This trophy and captives type is one of them and is specifically a Cyzicus type by Aurelian's reign.

There's also something else: in 269, together with the SPQR series and the blank exergue series of Cyzicus ants, the mint also struck a rarer series, the M - C (Moneta Cyzicus) series.

Here is a specimen of that series. Notice the C from M - C on the reverse and how it looks like the upper half of an S. Were the RIC Temp coin to be in a similar condition to the coin presented in OP, how likely would a collector tend to see an S instead of a C there?

I think quite likely.

 

Thanks so much, I really appreciate it.

This seems clearly to be a coin of Cyzicus, but the S is either an engraving error or an artifact of preservation.

 

The more I look at your coin, the more interesting it gets, because it might also suggest that one celator might have worked on dies for multiple series and was not assigned to just one series. If true, it is an interesting insight into the history of how Cyzicus operated during the reigns of Claudius II to Aurelian.