Emperor Probus looks Left and Right

I agree those are wonderful coins Martin. The spread quadriga was what I was referring to earlier. The first time you see one, they are so unusual you really aren't sure what you are looking at. Extremely interesting about the clouds, tyvm for that great information.

Chris

 

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There are even minor variations on the Sol facing type illustrated. The Rome, Siscia and Cyzicus examples I show have Sol with head facing forward. The Cyzicus example has Sol with head facing left. This Cyzicus example comes from the earliest emission of this type and all subsequent have Sol with head left.

 

As far as I am aware the clouds only occur at Siscia. This comes in handy when you are trying to attribute some coins of this type as examples from many of the mints that produced the type but without any mintmarks to help in attribution. My Siscia example above is unmarked and the clouds along with the style make it attributable to Siscia. The only way to identify the others is to learn the styles of the mints.

 

maridvnvm, thank you for the correction about the
Rome mintmark officina being an 'S'.

I did not catch it, either.

I corrected my website page.

 

Has anyone studied whether there is any relationship between the various obverse types (plain, heroic, consular) and the reverses they are used with or whether certain workshops tended toward use of certain obverses? Another thing to mention on the Adventus is the somewhat regular use of the claw like hand gesture (cartoonlike) which I assume had a meaning. Your Lugdunum has less of it that I am used to seeing.

 

The claw like raised hand seems to be the norm on all the types that I have seen.
Your Serdica coin is superb. I have only seen one other example of this type from that mint.
I am not aware of any analysis of the busts and workshops for these types. I will dig through my references to see if I can find anything.
The ADVENTVS PROBI type is quite rare for Lugdunum despite being common for most other mints. Ticinum examples are even scarcer.
This type has historical significance too as it was minted to commemorate a visit by Probus to the city in question.

I wanted to share another of my Lugdunum examples of this type with some text that I posted on another board some time back:-

"This coin is rated Common by RIC but the market would seem to indicate otherwise. I have not seem many examples of this type come onto the market.

The coin comes from a short issue made to commemorate Probus travelling through Lugdunum at the start of the summer of A.D. 277 travelling with his army from Asia to battle in the Rhine. The next, and to me most fascinating, emission, dating End A.D. 277 to Early A.D. 278 was produced to celebrate the return of Probus after his victories in Gaul and contains a very wide range of bust types that had been notably missing from the output of Lugdunum up to that point. (dating and historical information from Bastien).

Despite suffering from a partial flat strike leading to flatness at 6 o'clock on the obverse and 12 o'clock on the reverse and the remaining encrustations it is still a quite desirable example of a relatively scarce coin of historic interest to the Probus enthusiast."



The Lugdunum ADVENTVS coin above comes from the issue produced upon his victorious return through Lugdunum and was celebrated by the introduction of a variety of bust types rather then the plain cuirassed bust which has been the norm at Lugdunum up until this point.

Martin