ANCIENTS - Septimius Severus - BONA SPES

This is another Septimius Severus denarius that I have added recently.

Rev:– BONA SPES, Spes standing holding flower and lifting skirt.
Minted in Emesa, A.D. 194

I must admit to being happy with this purchase. Who can tell me why? Doug will probably spot it straight away.




Martin

 

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Cool coin, Martin ...

Honestly friend, I had to look-up "Spes" on wikipedia (so the info must be true?!!)

... anyway ...

=> ummm, your Spes-example seems to be a bit of a fat-kid rather than a goddess?

 

She is normally depicted as being a little more lithe....

 

Is it the obv. legend ?

 

It is indeed. Can you tell me what it is about it though?

 

I was thinking maybe it was SEVER instead of SEV. However I think I'm wrong now.

 

inquiring minds want to know!

 

That mint is far in the east for sure. Very interesting fat shaman reverse.

Not a Severn guy but I'm also gonna guess BONA instead of BONI EVENTVS COS blank? has something to do with it.

 

Is this one different than any others of the same type?

 

I'm glad I'm not a SS specialist or there wouldn't be any left for me. This is a nice coin.

 

The following coin has a full normal COS II obverse legend of "IMP CAE L SEP SEV PERT AVG COS II"



There is an odd sub-series of COS II coins that can be found with shortened variations of this obverse legend. The above coin has a "IMP CA L SE[P SEV] PER AVG COS II" legend with the CAE and PERT shortened. I have a sub-collection that focusses on these odd legend variations. Most people don't spot the missing letters. These dies have a large variety of spellings:-

"IMP CA L SE SEV PER AVG COS II"


"IMP CA L SEP SEV PER AVG COS II"


"IMP CA L SE SEV PER AG COS II" (I have this obverse die with three different reverses)


Martin

 

I was way off

 

Martin, absolutely stunning group of coins!! ... interesting

Man, it's awesome to see someone that is so interested & thorough with their target-hobby!! (you and Doug should have a Septimius Severus cage-match!!?)

 

This is a well known variation most of which seem to have taken up residence at Martin's place. I belie, however, I still have one not shown.


Part of the appeal of Septimius Severus is that his coins are numerous and considered beneath the notice of high end collectors. There are many Eastern denarii that are unlisted in the standard works to the point that a catalog of Martin's collection would be a better reference than RIC or any of the online databases. I suspect he has a half dozen coin that are the only one known but that is hard o demonstrate in a series so large and so poorly respected by scholars. There have been several other major collections formed and dispersed in the time I have been interested in them. These coins are not as beautiful and well preserved in large numbers as popular rarities. Scholars of the 19th century preferred to work with 12 Caesars leaving our Septimius for collectors of another millennium.

 

Doug's example is from the same obverse die as the last one I illustrated above.

Here are a couple more from the same obverse die...

 

More from this series....

As Doug states these are often not as well preserved or beautiful as some other coins which means that they require a niche collector to give them space in their collection. I am happy with this otherwise there would be too much competition for them.

This one also has the slightly different SE-V break



IMP CA L SE SEV PER AV COS II



IMP CA L SEP SEV PER AVG COS II



Same obv. die as my BONI EVENTVS above


which I like so much I have two of them!

 

Perhaps it would be good to point out that there are a thousand other specialties out there which would enable you to become ridiculously concentrated in something different than Martin and I. I almost stopped buying these after my friend Roger Bickford-Smith died back in the 90's and I had no one to talk to about the ones I found. My collection is small compared to Martin's. I do, however, believe it is good to have a consuming quest level specialty in addition to building a general collection of pretty coins.

If, however, you feel you must compete with us for what we collect, I suggest you obtain three auction catalogs and visit a website:
Arnold Collection, Glendenning, 21 Nov 1984
Kelly Collection, Spink 123, 18 Nov 1997
Bickford-Smith collections (small part - the BM got most of the good stuff), CNG 47, 16 Sep 1998
http://bpmurphy.ancients.info/severan/severanhome.htm

The plates in these make RIC and BMC look like a beginner collection. I'm sure I missed some others.

 

I can only echo Doug's comments. Anyone interested in this series can try and start with RIC and BMC but both these are severely deficient in their treatment of this series though BMC is better than RIC. A study of this series would have to start with an analysis of RIC in BMC to determing their relative shortcomings. An attempt to fit in oddities (II COS, II C, II CO etc.) into the chronology would be beneficial. Referencing out to Arnold, Kelly and Bickford-Smith would greatly expand the coverage. Barry Murphy's website documents the coins that he had in his collection and is invaluable. There are then a few of us who specialise in these series who could flesh out the missing bits. It then depends on how detailed the analysis should get. RIC, RSC and BMCRE include the PERT, PERET and PERTE legend varieties for the IMP series. BMCRE covers several legend break variations too for both obverse and reverse. I did start a project some years back to try and collate as much of this together to put it on the web but the project ran out of steam.

Martin

 

Whether writing the new RIC or organizing your personal holdings, the first important step for the so called 'Emesa' mint is to decide how to organize the obverse legends. Most of us agree that the series must start with the '1st legend' coins ending in AVG with no dating device and ends with the legends ending in COSII. The problem comes when we have to decide which of the others (II COS, II C, II CO, COS I, COSI--I etc.) have separate positions in a chronology and which are just variations. Similarly, how much importance do we place on the differences between PERT, PERTE and PERET from the so called 'Laodicea' mint. Then we have to decide if these two mints are one, two or more mints and how to separate them if we are not to accept the two mint RIC/BMC system.

My tendency is to continue with the two mint separation and lump all the middle legends into one group since so many of them are linked by certain reverse dies. I might need to rethink the split COSI--I obverses which seem to be more a part of the later COSII series than the other middle types. I remain completely unsurprised when we find a reverse known for an IIC obverse with, say, a COSI or IICO obverse since all these came and went at the mint in a very short period of time (probably early 194 AD).

There are a few stylistically oddball obverses that seem only to come with certain reverses and quite a few spelling variations which may just be errors. There are coins with dots in predictable places which the current leading scholars consider to be of no importance. We can agree or not but I prefer to record them as if they were not random. Traditional lists that avoid too much scholarship follow Cohen order which is alphabetical by reverse legend and ignores all dots, spacings and mintmarks. I prefer to follow RIC to a point but also prefer to separate out those middle legends.

I can see how the questions might weigh down a listing but we are not proposing a study of the coins but only a list of what we have or know to exist. That makes it easier. Enough that we will do it???

 

Nice write up Doug, bookmarking link!