An exercise in attribution

I thought it might be interesting to set an exercise for people in describing and attributing a coin. As part of the exercise I would prefer it is people don't look at references (paper or online resources) but simply use their ability to read a coin image to describe a coin.

Start with denomination and emperor
then Obverse legend and obverse description
then Reverse legend and reverse description
if you think that you can attribute to a mint and date then go for it

I am providing two images for the exercise. These are double die matches and there are issues on each coin that might prevent a full description without the other image so you might have to cross check between the images to finish. I bought the second example of this coin to allow such an exercise to be performed.

@dougsmit - I would prefer if you sat this exercise out as I am absolutely sure that you know the full answer within a fraction of a second.

I must admit that this might be a bit trivial for most members but thought it worth a try.



Martin

 

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This is a great idea. I am pretty sure I can ID the ruler and the reverse but I doubt I would be able to properly describe it. Looking forward to seeing how people do

 

I'll take a shot and see what I can learn, I am thrown off at the start by the thin bearded high cheek bone portrait and the uneven FORTVNAE REDVCI legend on the reverse - not a common coin, perhaps an unusual mint, imitation or counterfeit?

Denomination: denarius (?)
Emperor: Septimius Severus
Obv legend: IMP CAE L SEP SEV PERT AVG COS
Obv descr: laureate head right
Rev legend: FORTVNAE REDVCI
Rev descr: fortuna seated left with cornucopia and laurel branch

 

Excellent.

What if I tell you that the coin is official but that the obverse legend that you describe is not thought to exist? Is there anything else that might lead you to a different obverse legend?

The known legends fot this mint are:-
IMP CAE L SEP SEV PERT AVG (with some variations that I won't cover here)
IMP CAE L SEP SEV PERT AVG COS I
IMP CAE L SEP SEV PERT AVG COS II

Any guesses at the mint?

With the description of the reverse.... are these typical attributes for Fortuna? Could they perhaps be Fortuna as another deity/personification?

 

Without consulting Doug's excellent website, and going from memory (memories of going through Doug's excellent website), I am guessing this is one of those scarce issues from Alexandria? I base this on what I remember of the portraits Doug used to illustrate these.

Or was it Antioch? I am pretty sure it was Alexandria...

 

Not Alexandria.

 

I don't have a guess on COS * as I don't see any evidence of another character in either coin...some sort mashup of legends in the year of 5 emperors?

No new ideas on fortuna (a rudder a more common attribute). I would guess that there is a clue to the mint in the reverse, but I don't recognize it. I will defer to others.

 

Fortuna's headgear looks like a modius. Eastern deity Serapis typically wears a modius. Fortuna seems to be holding an olive branch (note the fruit) rather than a laurel branch.

 

I don't read the obverse legend as given.

 

Alright, this is what I see:

Denarius of Septimius Severus
Eastern mint (Cappadocia?), AD 193
IMP CAE L SEP SEV PEPT (sic) AVC COS, radiate head, right.
FORTVNAE REDVCI, Pax (?) wearing polos and stola, seated left, holding olive branch and cornucopiae.

 

We always point out that every die was an individual creation but when the die cutter is more than a little weak in Latin, all bets are off what you will get. I suspect both Martin and I have something approaching a hundred coins of this era that are not listed exactly in RIC. Some errors are very common certainly including the use of the Greek rho P for the Latin R. Some coins use a C (lunate Sigma) for S. B for R is harder to understand since both languages did use a B. The others are less common but often involve letters not matching in Greek and Latin. Then we have the matter of the COS dates which simply do not follow the rules used at Rome. Lately we are seeing renaming of the various mints disavowing the work of Mattingly who probably was wrong a bit but I've not seen the proof of the new mint names either. I'm not sure how Martin feels about the matter..... I'm not sure how I feel either. Should we be saying the mint formerly known as Emesa? Alexandria seems pretty certain from the style but the coins are found in places other than Egypt so I could not say we have absolute proof that the denarii were made there unless we can prove that the Alexandrian tetradrachms were not made somewhere else and shipped in for use in that city. I am a fan of the concept of mobile mint operations moving with the Emperor but there is no proof for that either (just non scientific fanboys who see merit in several ideas. People who need absolutes of anything probably would be better collecting something else.

 

This article by Bartosz Awianowicz is interesting for its list of variants and discussion of shared engravers, and literacy in Latin.

Peculiarities and Errors in the Legends Attributed to Antioch Denarii of Pescennius Niger and of Septimius Severus, Notae Numismaticae VIII (2013)

"The above errors and other peculiarities of the legends of the denarii of both Pescennius Niger and Septimius Severus from the location identified as the mint of Antioch corroborate Buttrey’s conclusions, in whose opinion some of them are so similar that “they must have been cut by the same engravers,” who would often have made the same mistakes."

"CAE appeared on the obverses of the denarii of Niger and Severus as a result of the customary practice used by Greek-speaking engravers, who would have likely worked before on the dies of provincial coins from the mints of Antioch or some other centres in Asia Minor and Syria"

A reinforcement for me of @Marsyas Mike's suggestion for "Antioch" as the relevant mint.

Fortuna as tyche/pax? another link with "Antioch"?
Date: sometime ~193-194?

 

I haven't seen any evidence that backs up the move of the mints by the BM to Cappodicea and Antioch.

So now we have moved a little further forward with the attribution. PEPT for PERT for example.

I have this coin attributed as COS II but why? I believe that Doug might disagree with this attribution but it is far from clear (as is the II).

Thoughts?

 

Well, I had thought these were just flow lines, but there is a hint of them on the other coin as well....

 

Here is a coin that is described as coming from the COS I issue.



Possibly the same engraver?

Obv:– IMP CAE L SEP SE - V PERT AVG COS I, Laureate head right
Rev:– FORTVNAE REDVCI, Fortuna (Pietas) standing left holding patera and cornucopia, sacrificing over altar
Minted in Emesa
References:– RIC Page 139 (5) (Scarce)

Was the OP coin supposed to be a COS II coin and the engraver ran out of room with the legend and scratched in those little marks? Is there another little I under the COS I coin above making it a COS II too.

Did the mint plan to produce a COS issue? This would be the normal way of designating COS I. Why did they produce a COS I issue which is an odd legend (there are several COS I dies)?

Are all the COS and COS I coins simply errors within the COS II issue?

The "the thin bearded high cheek bone portrait" described by @Sulla80 are thought to be the earlier busts in the series.

There are a whole host of different possibilities but we don't have answers.

This exercise was an example of describing what you see in front of you. It might not lead you to a conclusive answer but will give you as much data as possible to work on.

 

OK, I think we need a bit more support - or maybe I just need a bit of confirmation on the various lessons from the exercise, as I am certainly missing some fundamentals. Here's what I think I've picked up, above and beyond the value of looking carefully at what you see on the coins:

• As @dougsmith has pointed out in various posts - anyone who wants to know everything will find ancient coins a torture, run now!
  
• There is a historical context required to see any coin. Here are some anchors for Severus' rise to power (mostly summarized from RIC 4 Vol 1) and one could spend a lifetime researching one event of this period. This is good for collectors with small budgets as a couple of coins, an internet connection and a handful of books can be sufficient to keep you entertained for a while.
  • 193 is called "The year of the five emperors" as there were 5 claimants to the throne
    
  • AD Jan, 1 193, everyone woke up to the news that Commodus had been murdered in the night. Pertinax was declared Emperor and the senate accepted.
  • March 28th - Pertinax was murdered by the praetorians, and Didius Julianus bribed his way to being proclaimed emperor
  • April 13 (?) - Septimius Severus was proclaimed emperor at Carnuntum in the Pannonia region which is on the eastern edge of modern Austria
  • ~end of April - Pescennius Niger is proclaimed emperor in Syria. (worth noting that Julia Domna, wife of Septimius was from Emesa)
    
  • early June (?) - Didius Julianus was deposed and put to death as Septimius enters Rome
  • June - Septimius makes an ally of Claudius Albinus Caesar, usurper in Britain and the Iberian Peninsula (Spain), presumably to avoid distraction in the Western edges of the Empire
  • Pescinnius Niger would have minted coins in Antioch, the capital of Syria and the East (mostly silver, a little gold and no AE)
    
  • AD 194 - Severus invades the East and wins battles against Niger
  • The Campaigns against Niger in the east gave rise large eastern coinage, which must be distributed over three mints if not more
    • Mint 1: A small issue of the first 2-3 years of reign characterized by obverse legend "IMP CAE L SEPT SEV PERT AVG" which Laffranchi assigned to Alexandria by comparing with local issues
    • Mint 2: a mint striking silver and aurei for Severus with obv "L SEPT SEV PERT AVG IMP (I, II, V, VII, VIII)" [Laodica ad Mare - with lots of similarity to Antioch]
      
    • Mint 3: use "IMP CAE L SEP SEV PERT AVG COS II) and rarely COS and COS I ["conjecturally assigned to Emesa"]
  • AD 195 (Winter) Niger was beheaded and his head eventually makes it's way to Rome to be displayed, and Niger's family is also put to death
    
  • 195-196 (Winter) Albinus is proclaimed Augustus in Gaul and Britain
  • 197 Albinus is defeated by Septimius Severus near Lugdunum and he is sole Emperor
• "the thin bearded, high cheek bone portrait" can be assigned to an undetermined "eastern mint"
  
• @maridvnvm (Martin) has managed to find two unusual (rare?) coins with double matching dies >1820 years after they were minted
• if this first feat wasn't impressive enough he has the same coin, from slightly earlier, possibly by the same engraver which shows the trajectory between COS I and COS II
• Engravers, who weren't necessarily highly literate to begin with, struggled between latin and greek lettering - maybe especially in mints where they were switching between tetradrachms and denarii (PEPT for PERT, C's and G's look alike, et.c.)
  
• At least one engraver was happy to tuck a barely visible stub or two under the bust of a coin to squeeze in COS I and COS II
• @Carausius is impressively observant
• There are still lots of unknowns about "how many" and "where" for these eastern mints. Evidence to nail down a mint is not easy, as Mattingly b.1884- d.2004 & Sydenham b.1873-d.1948, authors of RIC volumes who worked at the British Museum aka BM, acknowledge often. As @dougsmit mentions there could be traveling mints too.

Thanks @maridvnvm for initiating the exercise. All, please add color, other important evidence, or correct my statements above...

 

The picture is even more complicated than that.

There are two eastern mints using "IMP CAE L SEPT SEV PERT AVG". These are differentiated by style. RIC and BMCRE attribute these as Alexandria and Emesa. The same legend is being used at Rome. The BM has now reallocted these coins of Emesa to Cappadocia. There are a few dies with PEPT for PERT and other errors etc....

Rome:-

Alexandria:-

Emesa/Cappadocia:-
BM example of same reverse type (which it now allocates to Cappadocia)

One of mine from a different type

 

If we look at the COS issues, there are a whols host of odd obverse legends, with various endings that are thought to precede the large COS II issue that is thought of as the Emesa / Cappadocia (I can't help but call it Emesa through habit).

These oddities are known though very small numbers of examples with a limited set of known obverse dies.

We have AVG II C (we know is linked to the AVG issue through die linkage of the reverse)

AVG II COS

AVG II CO

AVG . CO (die linked to AVG issue)

The we have the COS I issue (somewhat covered above) that can be linked to the COS II issue

 

There are a whole range of COS II issues that have shortened elements that seem to match closer in style to the IMP II series than to the COS II series. I am yet to find any die linkage between these and the larger COS II series.

(A small sample of legend varieties and dies illustrated)

IMP CA L SE SEV PER AVG COS II

IMP CA L SE SEV PER AV COS II

IMP CA L SE SEV PER AG COS II

 

The main COS II series follows from the COS I.

Some seem to hail back to the style of the COS and COS I examples above.




Reverse legends seem to shorten over time though this is largely speculative.