Coins of Lucilla once attributed to the wife of Aelius

Looking through the Numophylacium Sulzerianum, a catalog of coins in the Sulzer collection and published in 1777, I noticed that coins of Lucilla with the inscription LVCILLA AVGVSTA were thought to be issued for Aelius' wife ...



... and those with the inscription LVCILLAE AVG ANTONINI AVG F were thought to be issued for Lucius Verus' wife.



Any idea when and by whom it was discovered that all of these were actually issued for Lucius Verus' wife?

 

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no, but that's an interesting find RC..so they thought they were of his mother and not his wife..intriguing..

 

sestertius of Lucilla

 

Whoa, I actually have a relevant coin to add to a discussion - I should play the lottery (haha)!

 

One thing about collecting ancients, you have to be willing to accept change when the prevailing wisdom gets turned on it's head.

 

Yours from the "L. Veri vxor" (wife of Verus) section:



Mine from the "L. Aelii vxor" (wife of Aelius) section. It even describes the bust as "Caput Lucillae L. Aelii vxoris" (head of Lucilla, wife of Aelius):

 

I would show the Sulzer listing for that one, but he didn't have an example in his collection.

 

Yet RIC does not make this distinction. Could it be that later scholarship refuted this distinction? The obverse busts look pretty similar.


Bronze Sestertius
Rome mint
Obv: LVCILLA AVGVSTA
Rev: IVNO REGINA - Juno, veiled, standing, facing left, holding patera and scepter, peacock at feet, between S and C
RIC (Marcus Aurelius) 1751
32x29mm, 23.1g.

 

Well, yes. All of these coins are really from Lucilla, the daughter of Marcus Aurelius and wife of Lucius Verus. Aelius' wife wasn't even named Lucilla.

I just thought it interesting that in 1777, numismatists believed these issues to be for two different women.

 

Sulzer also inaccurately described Magnia Urbica as the wife of Carus:

 

i wonder then why the confusion...different hair style perhaps?

 

Is this the one described?
LOL, well the way Roman Imperial families were so intertwined, who KNOWS if they weren't "involved" with other Emperors...

RI Magnia Urbica 285 CE silvered Ant AE 23mm 3.4g cresent - Venus helmet scepter shield RIC 343

Checked my Lucillas... I do not think they are what was described above.

 

I have an auction sale catalog, M&M GMBH 44 (25 Nov. 2016), which offered 74 lots of individual coins of Lucilla. Most are not high grade, but someone put in a lot of work to assemble such an extensive group and it is nice to see each in color in the catalog.


Lucilla, 164-169.
LVCILLAE AVG ANTONINI AVG F
VOTA PVBLICA around wreath, dot within.

Sear II 5495. RIC 792 "Rare".
Reka Devnia had 2 of this type and 98 of the type with VOTA PVBLICA inside a wreath.
This type is very rare and was not represented in the sale catalog I mentioned.

 

Cool! I've never seen it with the wreath inside the inscription like that! Here's Sulzer's listing for the inscription within the wreath type: