A recent pick up from our own @John Anthony auction completed a set of Licinius I campgates that I'd been collecting- Very slowly!...From the Heraclea Thrace Mint the five Oficina's...... Licinius I (308-324 AD) AE3 Reduced Follis. Obverse..IMP LICINIVS AVG, laureate draped bust left holding globe, sceptre and mappa. Reverse..PROVIDENTIAE AVGG, campgate with three turrets and no door. Mintmark HT- A, B, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon...Minted (316-317) RIC VII Heraclea Thrace #15; Sear 15264. This is a nice example from the 5th Oficina with the added Provenance of it being ex - @dougsmit. (Sorry about the poor photo quality Doug.) Here's the set... Feel free to post your Lic campgates...
Nice work! I suppose this is a good time to post my mint set of 2-soldiers-2-standards issues of Constans. Why did I collect such a thing? This thread will tell you. Does anyone else collect mint or officina sets of LRB's?
Occasionally ... Here's a P/S/G officina set from Maxentius (RIC VI Aquileia 121a, except the consular bust which is 124). The reason I collected all officinas (and a couple of "duplicates") is because Aquileia used different pediment decorations at each officina, and it's quite interesting. Officina P used a star, either six-pointed or eight-pointed Officina S used a crescent (moon) Officina Gamma used a cross, either "x" or "+" This is 100% consistent. There seem to be two takeaways: 1) Each officina uses a single "logical" symbol, which may take different forms a) Officina P's six-pointed and eight-pointed stars are both just varieties of star (well, duh!) b) Officina Gamma's "x" and "+" are (perhaps not so "duh") likely both regarded as the same logical symbol also - in this case a cross 2) The symbols used at each officina are distinct. Officina Gamma's "x" and "+" are not sloppy types of star (which is officina P's symbol) - they are a cross! There is some ancient source (Eusebius? - I forget) that records Maxentius having shown some support for Christianity - but assumed (rightly or wrongly) to be insincere. It seems that officina Gamma's cross may well be meant as a Christian symbol (else what?), with "x" and "+" apparently being considered interchangeable.
Also Heraclea as the OP group, but the mintmark begins "SM". 20-18 mm. 2.84 grams. (I'm sorry the photo is out of focus.) PROVIDENTIAE AVGG .....Λ SMHB RIC Heraclea -- , p. 547, because 48 (for A and B) is bust left and 49 with bust right is only listed for Γ. @Spaniard , I'm afraid you have another Heraclea officina series to work on!
Thanks everyone!....And nice coins all! @John Anthony.....Nice collection and thanks for the link to your related thread, found it really interesting. Not an area I collect in at the moment and always thought of the 2 soldier/2 standard type as quite common, "How wrong I was!"..Cool set!... @dougsmit......Yes I spent a couple of hours trying to catch the lovely green brown colouring in hand, a difficult coin to capture...You know I love that Delta Portrait! @Heliodromus .....What a lovely collection! I didn't know about the pediment decorations, interesting feature!..Maybe the engravers of oficina 3 were all Christian? .... Yes already have a couple to start me off...But must say I've become quite interested in his sons coinage, maybe an area I'll look into more in the coming year...
That's actually an error in RIC - the busts are right facing for both the Licinii (L1 RIC 48 A/B, L2 RIC 49 Γ). http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.7.her.48 It's an interesting issue. Constantine's clan is temporarily excluded, the busts changed from left to right facing, and the enigmatic "^" field mark added. Constantine had stopped recognizing the Licinii about this time, so perhaps this is Licinius reciprocating before thinking better of it and including Constantine/etc on his following 12 1/2 DC type.
