I've been working up attribution for a Domitian As I just obtained (time has been unkind to it). It appears to be a fairly common coin, but as I was looking at various online examples, I noticed some have a dot in the obverse legend between GERM and COS. Some don't. Is there any significance to this, or is it just a common variation? The Flavian knowledge is so deep on Coin Talk I thought I'd throw it out there. The dot version seems slightly less common than no-dot, but I found quite a few: https://www.vcoins.com/en/stores/in...ing_holding_bowl_of_fruit/464298/Default.aspx https://www.numisbids.com/n.php?p=lot&sid=2656&lot=291 https://www.ancientcointraders.com/roman-domitian-fides-publica-p-480.html Here's mine: Domitian Æ As (86 A.D.) Rome Mint IMP CAES DOMIT AVG GERM • COS XII C[ENS PER P P], laureate bust right with aegis / FIDEI [PVBLICAE] S-C, Fides standing right holding ears of grain and basket of fruit. RIC 486; RCV 2804. (10.81 grams / 26 mm)
The Romans used these interpuncts the same way we use spaces between words; as an aid to facilitate reading. However, they were inconsistently used and, I'm guessing, normally regarded as superfluous back then (at least on coins). In my work I typically disregard them - as well as legend breaking patterns - as trivial unless at the end of a legend, in which case it obviously has some other function. Rasiel
Thanks for the input Rasiel. Doing a little more digging, I found David Atherton did a "dot" post a while back. He suspects they might function as mint control marks: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/dots-dots-and-more-dots.318978/
I browsed over this thread. Note that most of the ones that he showed as significant had the dots at the end of the legend. In this case, yes, they probably did serve some control function. The ones however that separate words are just a reflection of contemporary orthography. Dots as markers do play a much larger role in LRB of course. Rasiel
About the time you think you understand or choose to dismiss things like dots, you find other variations. I have about a dozen of these Septimius Severus denarii from more than one period of the Emesa mint showing a dot between SE and V on the obverse. Reverses come with zero, one or two terminal dots. Curtis Clay once said they were meaningless space fillers. I do not believe him but have no proof or explanation for the code.
I'm still of the opinion that not all dots are just spacing devices, some may very well have functioned as internal control marks. It's interesting to note that your as was struck contemporaneously with the 'dot' denarii.
