This is the second coin I purchased last month from JAZ Numismatics. What is most interesting (to me) was the plethora of control marks on both sides of the coin. The large wide open eye is another attaction. L. CASSIUS CAEICIANUS ROMAN REPUBLIC; GENS CASSIA AR Denarius OBVERSE: Draped bust of Ceres left, wreathed with corn, CAEICIAN (AN in ligature) and control letter behind REVERSE: Yoke of oxen left, control letter above, L CASSI in ex Struck at Rome 103 BC 18mm, 3.9g Crawford 321/1. Coin has the following control letters: * over F / L on obverse, * over Q on reverse - RSC Cassia 4 Post any relevant coins and thank you for looking
That's a nice-lookin' denarius, @Bing! I like Ceres' corn-ear crown. Here's my latest from JAZ -- a big-eyed Urbs Roma! Time of Constans and Constantius II. Roman billon reduced centenionalis, 1.59 g, 14.3 mm, 5 h. Heraclea, AD 347-348. Obv: VRBS ROMA, helmeted and mantled bust of Roma, left. Rev: VOT XX MVLT XXX legend in four lines within laurel-wreath, •SMHB below. Refs: RIC viii, p. 433, 56; LRBC I, 965; Cohen 10; RCV 17545.
L Cassius Caecianus (102 B.C.) AR Denarius O: Head of Ceres left, wreathed in grain.CAEICIAN (AN in monogram). R: Two yoked oxen pulling plow left"L CASSI" in exergue "T" 3.46g 28mm Rome Mint Cassia 1
A great coin, @Bing! I do very much like Republican coins with complicated, multi-part control marks. Here's my only Roman Republican coin depicting a pair of oxen, issued about 20 years later. See my second footnote, on the subject of oxen and ploughing: Roman Republic, C. [Gaius] Marius C.f. Capito, AR Serrate Denarius 81 BCE [Harlan: 81/80 BCE], Rome Mint. Obv. Draped bust of Ceres right, wearing earring, head bound with corn wreath, hair falling down neck; CAPIT• upwards behind, with legend followed by control number CI; control symbol (knife [Crawford, Table XXXIII at p. 395 ] or distaff [BMCRR p. 355]) to right of chin* / Rev. Husbandman/plowman left holding goad in right hand and plow in left, with yoke of two oxen plowing left with heads turned to face forward; horizontal test cut and control-number CI above; C•MARI•C•F / S•C [Senatus consulto] on two lines in exergue. Crawford 378/1c; RSC I Maria 9; Sear RCV I 300 (ill.); Sydenham 744b; BMCRR Vol. I 2855-2890 [Control-number CI is no. 2873]; Harlan, Michael, Roman Republican Moneyers and their Coins, 81 BCE-64 BCE (2012) [“RRM I”], Ch. 2 at pp. 8-13. 19 mm., 3.97 g., 10 hr. Purchased Feb. 21, 2021 from Nomos AG, Obolos Auction 18, Lot 468.** *Crawford’s three sub-types of this issue (378/1a-1c) differ in the existence and placement of the control-symbols found on some of the coins in addition to the control-numerals found on all of them (with the obverse and reverse of a coin always bearing the same numeral except in the case of hybrids, which are almost uniformly fourrees). All three sub-types are numbered continuously: 1a bears the control-numerals from I to XXIII (with no control-symbols); 1b the numerals from XXVI to XXXII (with control-symbols in the exergue on the reverse) [examples of XXIV and XXV are not known]; and 1c the numerals from XXXIII to CLI (with control-symbols on the obverse beneath & to the right of Ceres’s chin). (See Crawford Vol. I p. 392; see also Table XXXIII, listing the known control-symbols at pp. 392-395.) Examples with 125 of the 151 conrol-numerals were known to Crawford, on 125 different obverse and reverse dies. Thus, no pair of control-numerals, or combination of control-numeral and control-symbol, has more than on pair of dies, and the seven other examples of Crawford 378/1c with the control-numeral CI found on acsearch are all double-die matches to my example. Since Crawford was published in 1974, at least one coin with a previously unknown control-numeral (LXXXII) has been found, in the Mesagne hoard, bearing a tripod as its control-symbol. ** Regarding the general symbolism of a husbandman plowing with oxen, as depicted on the reverse of this coin, see Jones, John Melville, A Dictionary of Ancient Roman Coins (Seaby 1990) at pp. 121-122 (entry for “Founder”), explaining that the Romans “inherited a custom from the Etruscans of defining the boundaries of a new city by marking them with a plough,” so that certain coins showing plowing can be interpreted as a reference to the founding of colonies. Regarding this coin-type in particular, Grueber states at p. 353 n. 2 of BMCRR Vol. I that “[t]he type of the head of Ceres [the goddess of agriculture] and the husbandman refers to the foundation of a colony” by Sulla’s veterans. Crawford disagrees, stating at Vol. I p. 392 that “I do not believe that there is any reference to Sulla’s colonies” on these coins, and that the obverse and reverse images simply complement each other. Harlan (see RRM I Ch. 2 at pp. 10-12) disagrees with Crawford and prefers Grueber’s interpretation, stating at p. 12 that this type “not only depicts the expectations of the veterans who were to receive land, but also expounds the benefits to be found in the return to peace, masking in bucolic tranquility the terrible exactions that procured the soldiers’ rewards. Besides the land given to the veterans in those new colonies established among the Italians, Sulla also had to pay his troops their back wages and maintain them until they were discharged. This special S•C issue may well represent some of that money distributed to the soldiers and the design on the coin also may be heralding the expected grants of land.” See also Sear RCV I at p. 128 regarding the S•C in the exergue on the reverse of Crawford 378/1c: “It would seem that during his term of office this moneyer was authorized by the Senate to effect a substantial increase in the originally-produced volume of his coinage.” (The first series of this type [Crawford 378/1a] does not bear the S•C, the only case in the Roman Republican coinage of the S•C being added to a type in the course of production during a given year.)
