I have always liked coins with questions and that is what attracted me to the Anonymous Pagan AE4's as represented by my latest purchase (from Victor - arrived today). One question is if these are coins or tokens. Another is who issued them. Another is why. I'll tell a little about them but the big one is what drove me to buy twelve that most of you would consider to be the same coin. That I can not answer. Those of you who like RIC numbers for your Roman coins will be distressed to know that these are not in RIC. That is not because they were not considered worthy but when RIC volume VI was written the prevailing scholarship dated these to the time of Julian II (vol. VIII) but when vol. VIII was written, the coins were reassigned to c.312 AD which would be in vol. VI. There are several types of Anonymous Pagan coins but only two are common. This Tyche with Apollo and a Jupiter with Victory, both from Antioch, are probably a hundred times as common as any of the others. My new purchase completed my set by workshop of this type; I lack one of the Jupiter/victory; I have only one coin of any other type. These small coins have been called both 1/4 and 1/5 of a nummus. I remain unconvinced. The two common Antioch coins use different mint marks. This one has SMA (Sacred Money of Antioch) while the Jupiter coin uses ANT. Why? I have no idea. Not being in RIC and omitted by people who wrote their books based on RIC limits market exposure to many collectors. David Vagi did list the coins in his two volume set but he does not explain the questions raised by the coins. One theory suggests that these coins were in some way associated with Christian Persecutions but exact role they played is less than certain. Were these coins showing a pagan god used for a sacrifice that Christians would be unwilling to perform when ordered? This possible association probably has increased demand for these coins. That demand is inconsistent and some dealers consider the coins special while others think of them as junk. To assemble the set, I paid from $6 to $100 but we see many offered at prices above that. Antioch mint used ten officinae or workshops numbered in Greek numerals but replaced the unlucky Θ (first letter in the word for death) for nine with ΕΔ or 5+4 which adds up to nine and was very common on coins from the Pagan era. When Christianity was established, such superstitions were eliminated. The additive 9 was the best evidence that the earlier later date was incorrect. The coins must have been made while Antioch was using ΕΔ. In addition to the ten coins making the A to I officina set, I include two variations. Officina E (5) produced some coins with the SMA mintmark reversed and reading AMS. These are relative common making me believe there were several dies with the error but I have not done the research to back up that theory. The other error is on a coin of workshop B where the reverse right legend SANCTO is misspelled SANSTO. I have not seen another specimen of this one. The obverse shows the well known Tyche statue of Antioch with small swimmer below. The reverse show Apollo standing wearing a fancy decorated robe which shows detail on very few of the coins on the market. It is bold on my ΕΔ coin. In earlier days, Apollo was rarely so well dressed (if he was dressed at all). Perhaps, since the occasion for this post was the arrival of the coin to fill out the set, I should show it alone. Here is I. Thanks Victor. Show your Anonymous Pagans.
Excellent coin/excellent set. As you know Doug, some time a ago I took an interest in these little coins/tokens, but, alas, other interests have taken over. Hewre are a couple of mine:
Great set! Mine's from the 'death workshop'. The SANSTO misspelling is very interesting. I found another one on acsearch, but from officina A.
I have not seen a complete set of workshops and yours are in better condition than normally found. I'm not as well versed with the workshops, my main goal is to complete a set of 1 coin of each type. I currently have 6 with duplicates. I'm interested in these for the same reasons as you and wonder why only 3 mints produced these. Antioch mint AE Quarter nummuus Obvs: GENIO ANTIOCHENI, Tyche of Antioch facing; river god Orontes below. Revs: APOLLONI SANCTO, Apollo holding lyre and patera. Gamma. SMA in ex 16mm, 1.6g Ref: Vagi 2954 Antioch mint AE Quarter nummuus Obvs: IOVI CONSERVATORI, Jupiter seated holding globe and scepter. Revs: VICTORIA AVGG, Victory holding wreath and palm branch. ANT in ex, N to right. 16mm, 1.3g Ref: Vagi 2955 Nicomedia mint AE Quarter nummuus Obvs: DEAE SANC CERERI, veiled and draped bust of Ceres left, holding grain ear and poppy in raised right hand. Revs: GEN CIVI T NICOM, Fortuna Redux standing facing, head left, holding in right hand rudder set on ground and cradling cornucopia in left arm; OPA. 15x16mm, 1.46g Ref: Vagi 2958, Van Heesch 1 Alexandria mint AE Quarter nummuus Obvs: DEO SARAPIDI, Bearded bust of Sarapis right, wearing modius. Revs: SANCTO NILO. River-god Nile reclining left, holding reed and cornucopia, resting on hippopotamus, crocodile or sphinx to right. 12x13mm, 1.22g Ref: Vagi 2960, Van Heesch 8
Fascinating coins and I was unaware of their existence. I've seen the Anubis type votive of Alexandria but not these. Sadly, don't have any yet.
Van Heesch talks about this a bit and narrows down the possible issue date. Antioch and Alexandria were in the diocese of Oriens and controlled by Maximinus II; while Nicomedia was in the diocese of Pontica and controlled by Galerius until his death in A.D. 311. After Galerius died, Maximinus II took over Nicomedia. Van Heesch argues for an issue date of A.D. 312 because of this.
Antioch still occasionally used ΕΔ at later dates. The campgates below were issued A.D. 327- 328 and the VRBS is A.D. 330- 333.
Resurrecting an old thread, but have some lingering questions about the Antioch officinae. Most make sense to me except 2 of them. Since the mint is using Greek, it seems we are missing #8 which I understand was purposefully omitted because of it's superstitious nature, similar to floor 13 of hotels, but why are there two 9's as the letter I is also 9? Are there 10 officinae and 2 of them 9's? Was EΓ or some other combo not a valid option. If I understand correctly, theta was the sole reason for not using an 8, not the number 8 itself. The second issue I am not understanding is the S workshop. S (lower case sigma) in Greek is 18th in the alphabet and the only one that is not a capital letter. What am I missing here?
You Greek alphabet chart is missing the sixth letter S or Ϛ which was 6 and Q which was 90. Those letters were used in archaic Greek but fell out of use by the first century except as numerals. Note we now have F and Q in proper place but modern Greek lacks those letters. As stated in post #1 above, the ΕΔ additive (5+4=9) was instrumental in dating these coins to the pagan era when the unlucky Θ was not used. When Christianity came, the superstition left and we find Θ for officina 9. Old books attributed these coins to Julian II but that could not be because Julian never used ΕΔ for 9. This explains why these coins are not in RIC. When RIC volume VI was written, standard wisdom placed them in the future volume VIII but by the time VIII was prepared, they knew the coins belonged in VI. Because they were not in RIC, copycat books failed to list them either. David Vagi did a correct listing for the coins in his two volume book in 1999 but there are still sellers that don't know what to do with them since they are not in RIC. I note that online texts in modern Greek use Arabic numerals: https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ελλάδα Does anyone know when old Greek numbers were abandoned?
I see the error in my ways now, thank you to you both. That makes sense to me. As always Doug is a wealth of information. And so begins my journey down the rabbit hole of this complex series.
