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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DCCR, post: 4615615, member: 106566&quot;]Hi [USER=14873]@jamesicus[/USER],</p><p>&nbsp;I&#039;ve read this before in the original paper. It concludes with:</p><p>&quot;There is no obvious way to reconcile these conflicting dates. Even if we could invent some explanation whereby Severus reduced (for some reason) the number of his salutations, we would still have the problem of the inconsistency of the diplomas and the medallions. The particular problem is that both sets of titles emanate from (different parts, no doubt, of) the official bureaucracy at Rome. It is conceivable that new evidence will turn up one day to help with both problems. All we can say at the moment is that, for Caracalla, all the diplomas, medallions, and inscriptions are consistent in according him a second salutation in 207. And it is hard to avoid the conclusion that, apart from this, everyone was unclear about the numbering of Septimius’ salutations.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>My thoughts on it are:</p><ol> <li>I&#039;m not qualified to challenge either the data or the arguments that either Andrew Burnett or Curtis made.</li> <li>I wasn&#039;t impressed with Andrew Burnett&#039;s paper. He may have had some valid points in that paper, but he had hidden them well; I certainly couldn&#039;t find them. If I remember correctly he was pushing the theory that Caracalla won a secret war in Parthia that no one bothered to write anything down about or celebrate on coin. It doesn&#039;t seem to be in Caracalla&#039;s character to keep that kind of thing quiet, especially as he minted coins celebrating his defeat of the Parthians when he was only a boy. I also struggle with the idea that on the eve of the biggest, most glory giving campaign he could have taken part in, he would have headed to the furthest away point in the empire he could have gone to to fight a minor war with people he had already defeated</li> <li>I will generally accept Curtis&#039; conclusions unless I have evidence or reason to doubt them.&nbsp; That hasn&#039;t happened yet, but I&#039;m leaving that door open <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></li> </ol><p><br /></p><p>So on balance, if [USER=89514]@curtislclay[/USER] says they accepted acclamations in late 209 AD then I will go along with that. The problem is that I&#039;m not sure it tells us much. The outcome of the war was always going to be a Roman win, and it would have taken time to get the order from York to Rome to mint the coins, so it&#039;s probable that they declared themselves victorious in 209, possibly in anticipation of the event. Whether the war ended then, carried over into early 210 AD for some general mopping up, or carried over into early 210 AD because it took longer than expected (perhaps bad winter weather), I don&#039;t know. What I am fairly confident of is that there is no way Caracalla and Geta hung around in York for the first half of 210 just for fun, so something was still going on. Elliot doesn&#039;t address this gap in the timeline. My main quibble with Elliot&#039;s timeline is the start. Nothing is done in 208 AD, and *everything* happens in 209 AD. Reed has them moving North and securing as far as Fife in 208 AD which makes more sense to me.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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