Unknown Barbarian Tremissis of Leo

This is a newly arrived auction win from ROMA E-86, an imitative tremissis of Leo I which was not more precisely identified. The die work is pretty competent, with the dancing Victory on the reverse beautifully rendered. She appears to be wearing a jeweled apron, which leads me to suspect the celator did not have a good idea of Classical dress. The lettering suggests illiteracy, with the A of VICTORIA lacking a crossbar, and the M’s merely two upright posts. The star in the field is 6-pointed.

The photo is Roma’s since I haven’t managed to take one better.

It is different in every way from the imitative tremissis of Leo I have previously posted, which has an almost abstract depiction of Victory and entirely retrograde reverse lettering.


I believe @Tejas has raised the subject of the origin of these. I do not have any more insight except to say that I cannot believe these two coins came from the same workshop, so there must be at least two sources.

 

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Beautiful coin.

Not sure about Victory dancing, looks like she's "holding it in" wishing the posing would cease.

 

Very attractive and interesting coin. I also have one of these Leo I Tremissis imitations. I shall post a picture next week. It is in the bank vault and hasn't been out for a long time.

Mine has the legend: DN LEOPE RPETAVC // VIVCOCIAY AUV -- CONOBH

Mine is die-identical to Italo Vecchi sale 13, September 1998, Lot 1195

Italo Vecchi lists the coin under the Ostrogoths, claiming that it was of "typical early Gothic style" and attributes it to Theodemir and Vidimir, who were Theoderic the Great's father and uncle, respectively. Italo Vecchi speaks of an "uncertain Italian mint".

A lot is wrong with Italo Vecchi's attribution. First, the Ostrogoths arrived in Italy 489, i.e. more than 15 years after the death of Theodimir and Vidimir. Hence, no Ostrogothic coins were minted in Italy before 489.
Second, the "typical early Gothic style" is fantasy. If anything, the coin does not look like an Italian mint product. Third, Theodimir and Vidimir were warlords who obtained coins through plunder or in payment for military services or as tribute, but they probably never minted coins themselves. At least there is no evidence for that.

Hence, Metlich "The coinage of Ostrogothic Italy" does not include any coins of Leo (457-474) in the Ostrogothic series. The same is true for Grierson and Blackburn "Medieval European Coinage" Vol. I.

The only Germanic kingdoms that produced their own or imitative coins at the time, were 1) the Vandals under Gaiseric and Huneric, 2) the Burgundians under Gundobad 3) the Visigoths under Euric and 4), to a lesser extent, the Franks under the Merovingian Chlodevig.

I think the Leo I imitations don't fit to any of these kingdoms. In fact, I think they are more likely the product of an eastern mint. They seem to form a stylistically similar group. I think they were issued only for a short time, perhaps some kind of emergence military issue, but that is speculation too.

 

Hrefn, CNG archives has a number of Leo I tremissis coins that appear barbaric at first sight but have been attributed to the Constantinople Mint, like the coin pictured below from E-Auction 186.


https://www.cngcoins.com/Coin.aspx?CoinID=123082

 

Here is the picture of my imitative Leo I Tremissis.

DN LEOPE RPETAVC // VIVCOCIAY AUV -- CONOBH

 

Difficult for me to believe that is the product of an official mint, even an emergency one. The celator not only was illiterate but also had no idea of the significance of the exergue. First time I have seen CONOB in the wrong place on a coin.

 

I partly agree. The reverse shows a strangely stylized Victoria and the reverse legend is completely blundered and misplaced. Yet, the obverse legend is spelled correctly and the bust is of fine official-looking style.

I think it is not a million miles away from these, supposedly official Constantinopel issues:
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=3488067
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=3482320
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=7880641

Overall, a lot more research on these coins is needed. For example, could the peculiar lettering with the strong serifs and missing A-bars be indicative of a certain region or even mint? Can the style of the "dancing" victoria be matched to any other coins of that period?

PS: My coin is almost certainly die-identical to the Italo Vecchi coin. However, I still don't buy their attribution to an "Italian mint" under Gothic leaders Thiudimir and Vidimir.

 

Here is another interesting "barbaric" Leo I tremissis. This one is not in my collection.

Ex:
Pecunem auction 3, 5. May 2013, Lot 313



Following Italo Vecchi, Pecunem attributed the coin to an Italian mint under Thiudimir, which is a historical impossibility since Thiudimir never set foot in Italy.

I wonder if it is possible that these were made by semi-official mints in provincial towns, who employed inapt celators or goldsmiths to alleviate temporary coin shortages, i.e. much like the imitative bronze issues in the 3rd and 4th centuries.

 

Interesting. The “M”s in the reverse inscription are just two upright posts, just like the first coin in this thread.

 

The question of official vs. imitative (or barbarian) pertains not just to some of Leo's Tremisses it also concerns some of his silver coins.

Here are two Siliquae from my collection. Are these coins official or are they imitations. If they are imitations, who made them and why?

Siliqua (1.05g)
D N LEO PERPET AVG // SAL REI PYI -- CONZ *



Half-Siliqua (0.68g)
.N LEO RE PPE... // SAL REI PYI -- CONZ *

 

Dirk, This is a tough call on both coins . Pictured below is a coin posted on Numista as a 1/4 siliqua, .68 gm, 14 mm, Uncertain Germanic tribes. It looks very close to the 2nd coin you posted .



The coin pictured below sold at CNG 446, Lot 433, as a 1/2 siliqua, .94 gm, 15 mm, as a contemporary imitation, "Any more certain attribution is presently impossible."

 

Hi Al, your first coin is my second coin.

Apparently, there are two groups of these silver coins: a heavy group that is near the target weight and a light group that is well below the target weight.

Since both groups show the same designs they were probably meant to be the same denominations. Hence, the second, light group, which also shows particularly barbarous elements, was declared "imitative".

Now, was this group really produced by a barbarian people, as auction houses seem to believe, or is it "inflation money" produced by official mints to reap seigniorage for the imperial coffers? Unfortunately, we don't know. Hoard and find spot evidence could be of great help to decide the question.

The first, heavy group also includes a lot of rather barbaric design elements, like my first coin above, which was also sold as "barbaric imitation". However, I think even for the official Leo I siliquae the stylistic elements were poorly controlled and all the coins may in fact be official. In this case, I would also not be surprised if the rather barbaric looking Tremisses were poorly controlled official issues.

 

Dirk, Late Roman silver coins show large variations in weight & this has always puzzled me . This is true even if we look back a century before Leo's reign. The two coins pictured below illustrate my point. Both coins came from the same hoard, were struck at the same mint, & from the same reign, yet there is over a 1/2 gram difference in weight. Other coins from the East Harptree Hoard show even greater differences in weight. Silver was a scarce commodity in the late Roman empire, so I'm guessing these silver coins were traded by weight rather than nominal established denominations. BTW, I sold the light-weight coin at CNG E-Auction 483 for $354.00 .

 

This is difficult to say. All things being considered, the Constantinople mint is not known for its quality during this time (and beyond). I don't see anything on the tremissis that would definitively attribute it as anything other than a regular issue.

 

Two hundred years after Leo I, during the perilous time of Constantine IV, there was a clear decline in literacy and orthography at the Constantinople mint. Of course, the Muslims were knocking on the gates at this time.
I am not even sure what the celator was trying to say on this solidus.

Constantine IV solidus, Constantinople mint, 668-681 AD


So it is demonstrable that the Constantinople mint two centuries after Leo was capable of putting out a crude, misspelled, illiterate product during a time of existential crisis for the Empire. I mean, look at the feet of the imperial brothers Heraclius and Tiberius on this coin. They are just dots.

But that raises the question, what crisis in Leo I’s reign would prompt an emergency issue of gold? And if you need an emergency supply of coined gold, why strike tremisses? Constantine IV had to surrender 300,000 solidi to the Arabs when he struck a truce with them. Crudely struck coins would serve, since the money was leaving the Empire anyway. Any sum in tremisses would take three times as long to strike as opposed to solidi, so emergency tremisses make no sense in a circumstance like that.

On the other hand, we know that various barbarians preferentially coined tremisses, sometimes to the near exclusion of solidi. The Visigoths, Merovingians, Saxons seem to have struck more tremisses than solidi, and the Ostrogoths and Lombards certainly did not neglect the denomination either.

All of which proves nothing one way or the other, but suggests to me the so-called imitative tremisses of Leo I are of barbarian origin. Proponents of an official origin should be prepared to explain why quality control declined for tremisses, but not solidi. Because the solidi continued to be superb.


My thanks to everyone who has contributed to this discussion. It has been most thought-provoking.

 

I posted this coin before but here is my Leo I tremissis in a somewhat barbarian style.



AV Tremissis (14 mm, 1.47 grams, 6h), circa A.D. 457-474

Obverse: D N LEO PE-NPET AVC, diademed, draped and cuirassed bust right
Reverse: VICTORIV AVCVSTORVN, Victory walking right, head left, holding wreath in right hand and globus cruciger in left; star in right field; CONOB in exergue
Reference: cf. RIC X 611 for type
Provenance: Ex Elsen 87 (March 11, 2006), Lot 1848; Dürr & Michel (November 8, 1999), Lot 377, Guy Lacam collection

Elsen listed it as a Germanic issue but I was always puzzled why they specified it as being from an "uncertain Italian mint". Reading Tejas above comments made me realize that no doubt they were merely following Vecchi's attribution. I'm wondering if I need to move this coin from the Early Medieval section of my collection to the Roman. The border between these two areas is shadowy and ever-changing.

Hrefn, you commented that gold coins intended for emergency barbarian payments might have been minted at the official Constantinople in a sub-standard "barbarian" style, but that those issues would likely be in solidi and not tremissis. I agree with that general reasoning, but as you also observed, the western Germanic tribes preferred the tremissis standard so is it possible that they would demand that their payments be received as such regardless of how difficult it would be for the eastern Empire to produce them? Can these strange Leo I tremissis be survivors of western barbarian payments?

 

It is a reasonable question. Is there any historical reference to barbarian payments in tremisses? And wouldn’t bribes to the barbarians in the West be the responsibility of the authorities in Rome, Ravenna, and Milan, and thus be Western style if paid in tremisses? The other question is why these barbarian style tremisses all seem to feature Leo? Where are the Zeno’s, the Marcian’s, with spelling errors, retrograde letters and devices, etc?

Guy Lacam had some great coins.

 

Theoderic and Hrefn, you raised a number of interesting questions. Here is my take on them:
1. Why are there "barbaric" Leo I Tremisses, while Soldi were minted in fine style?
I'm speculating, but I think all it needed was that Solidus production was done at a well controlled official workshop that employed capable celators and mintworkers, while the production of (at least some) Tremissss and Siliquae was, for some unknown reasons, temporarily shifted to lesser workshops.

This Solidus of Anthemius (not my coin!) was produced by the official mint in Rome, but it looks much more barbaric than any of the later Ostrogothic gold coins. It looks like control over minting quality temporarily slipped during his reign.
I think we should not forget that celators that produced high quality Solidus dies, were real artists. These people may have been scarce and sometimes completely unavailable.




2. Did the "Barbarians" prefer Tremisses over Solidi? I think the relative frequency of Tremisses compared to Solidi in the Ostrogothic, Visigothic and Burgundian kingdoms says something about the purpose of money. Solidi were minted to pay taxes, make large scale international transactions or pay federate troops. Tremissis were much more useful in daily commerce. So I doubt that emergency Tremisses were ever minted to pay off barbarians because they generally preferred Tremisses over solidi.

3. Why are these barbarian Tremisses and Siliquae focused on the reign of Leo I? I think this comes back to question 1. Maybe the deployment of lesser, perhaps auxiliary workshops was a temporary emergency measure to alleviate resource bottlenecks at the main official workshops. Clearly, this is guesswork, but I think the "barbaric" Tremisses and Siliquae of Leo I may tell us more about the condition of coin production in Constantinople than any "unknown Germanic barbarians".

I think proponents of the "unknown barbarians theory" need to come up with a plausible barbarian people as originator of these coins. Who has produced these coins if not the Romans? The only barbarian peoples minting gold coins at the time of Leo were the Visigoths, some Gallic mints and perhaps the Burgundians and I'm quite certain that the Leo I tremisses did not originate there. Also, there was no "unknown" barbarian mint operating in Italy at the time of Leo.

 

Dirk, I don't know who attributed the Anthemius solidus you posted, but this coin is clearly not the product of the Rome Mint, & most likely should be attributed to Uncertain Germanic Tribes, like the Zeno solidus from my collection.



CNG Triton XXIV had 2 solidi of Anthemius from the Rome Mint in this auction that don't resemble the coin you posted, see photos below.


Anthemius, AD 467-472, AV Solidus: 4.45 gm, 20.5 mm, 6 h. Rome Mint. This coin sold for 20K !


Anthemius, AD 467-472, AV Solidus: 4.41 gm, 21 mm, 6 h. Rome Mint.
Both of these coins were struck from different dies. Notice that a monogram was used to identify the mint, not the letters R M.


Anthemius, AD 467-472, AV Solidus: 4.35 gm, 20 mm, 6 h. Ravenna Mint. Ex CNG Triton XI, Lot 1051.
This coin from the Ravenna Mint is cruder than the coins from the Rome Mint, & uses the letters R V instead of a monogram to identify the mint.