A new purchase from Frank's latest auction -- an as of Herennia Etruscilla, the wife of Trajan Decius. During her tenure as empress, she was the sole woman on the throne. AVGG is plural. To whom does the "fecundity of the august ones" refer? The empress and her husband? The empress and some daughter-in-law? The problem is that apart from numismatic evidence, we wouldn't even know Herennia Etruscilla was the wife of Trajan Decius! We know next to nothing about her. Has anyone here read a good explanation of the plural AVGG on the reverse of this coin? Herennia Etruscilla, AD 249-253. Roman Æ as, 8.47 g, 23.4 mm, 1 h. Rome mint, 6th officina, AD 251. Obv: HERENNIA ETRVSCILLA AVG, diademed and draped bust, right. Rev: FECVNDITAS AVGG S C, Fecunditas standing left, her right hand extended to child standing at her feet, holding cornucopiae in left. Refs: RIC 135b; Cohen 13; RCV 9507; Hunter 13; ERIC II 53.
Nice coin, Roman Collector! I'm afraid I cannot shed any light on this situation except to share a similar puzzling example I bought last summer. This is an antoninianus of Salonina with a PVDICITIA AVGG reverse. RIC 65 is for AVG only. When I came to research it, I found that it even alarmed Göbl - at least according to the Gallienus.net site, which said this: "The (reverse legend) should be PVDICITIA AVG. Göbl lists error coins with an ! in the table listing, which is why it has a regular Göbl number." http://gallienus.net/ I wasn't sure if this meant Göbl considered it an error or not (I do not have the original source). Most RIC 65 examples I could find online were just AVG, not AVGG (there was one on FORVM with AVGG but the link's not working - it didn't really provide any information beyond the photo anyway). Of course many Gallienus/Valerian issues had AVGG for a while, when they were both co-rulers, but the empress Salonina was usually left out of this, I believe. So this could just be a mint error. My photo is too bright - it actually looks like silver in hand (debased, of course, but still silvery). Finally I should mention this was one of my best buys of 2018 - I got it on eBay for $0.01. Hard to beat that price! Salonina Antoninianus (wife of Gallienus) (c. 253-260 A.D.) Asian Mint (or Antioch Göbl) SALONINA AVG, diademed, draped bust right on crescent / PVDICITIA AVGG, Pudicitia standing left, right hand raised to veil, left holding scepter. RIC 65 error; Göbl 1594c (!) (3.06 grams / 22 mm)
There are several coins of Salonina on Wildwinds with AVGG including CONCORDIA depicting Salonina and Gallienus clasping hands.
I think the reason the OP Fecunditas and my Pudicitia are so odd is that they both have a single deity usually (not always) associated with Imperial ladies and also have the AVGG. My experience is limited in these matters, so maybe this isn't as odd as I think it is.
That actually makes sense because it would mean "Harmony of the august ones," referring to the imperial couple. Fecundity, though, is a different matter.
For the first time, I looked up this coin in Banduri's Numismata imperatorum Romanorum a Trajano Decio ad Palaeologos augustos, published in 1718, so it admittedly does not reflect the most modern scholarship on this coin. The middle bronzes with both the AVG and AVGG legends are listed: Note there is a footnote in the listing with the AVGG legend. It reads: This is translated as "This coin does not praise the fecundity of the empress but that of the emperor and the empress* ..." The remainder of the footnote mentions the existence of similar issues of the Empress in silver and notes their rarity. This answers my question: AVGG refers to Decius and his wife. *Augustorum is genitive plural; literally "of the august ones," and refers to the imperial couple.
