Featured I, Claudius, bringing a project to completion and an identification to confusion, then; dies.

Discussion in 'Ancient Coins' started by svessien, Jun 29, 2020.

  1. curtislclay

    curtislclay Well-Known Member

    Most people agree that all of the latest gold and silver coins of Augustus and the entire gold and silver coinage of Tiberius were struck at Lugdunum. But by 69 AD, the gold and silver mint had apparently been moved to Rome, since Otho struck lots of gold and silver, certainly not at Lugdunum since he never had control of Gaul and that mint.

    So when was the mint moved? Mattingly proposed, in 37 AD, when Caligula's laureate head replaced his bare head on his aurei and denarii. Sutherland followed Mattingly's proposal in his revised RIC I of 1984. This, then, is the source for the idea that all of Claudius' gold and silver coinage was struck at Rome, which has of course been taken over by OCRE and by many coin dealers who have naturally consulted the revised RIC in order to attribute their Julio-Claudian coins.

    There was a much more obvious change in the gold and silver coinage in 64 AD, however, which most numismatists today think must reflect the transferal of the mint from Lugdunum to Rome. In 64 Nero lowered the weight and fineness of his gold and silver coins, and drastically altered their types. On the obv. an older, laureate portrait of the emperor with a wave of hair rising above his forehead was introduced, and the counterclockwise obv. legend was changed to clockwise. On the rev. new types with descriptive legends were introduced, replacing the letters EX SC and the imperial titles of Nero which were constant from TR P to TR P X. So it would appear that the mint was not moved until 64 AD, meaning that the entire gold and silver coinage of Claudius was still probably produced at Lugdunum.
     
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2020
  2. Avatar

    Guest User Guest



    to hide this ad.
  3. Romancollector

    Romancollector Well-Known Member

    Beautiful denarius @svessien and a funny coincidence. The obverse of my antoninus from the same auction also seems to be a die match to coins with different reverses. Denarii of Claudius like that are exceptionally rare... well done! Enjoy it! I’m a little bit jealous ;)
     
    svessien likes this.
  4. svessien

    svessien Senior Member

    Thank you, @curtislclay
    I picked up Sutherland «Roman Coins» to see if he expanded on this, but you summed up what he wrote well. Sutherland writes in note 177:
    «Mattingly (...) observed the change from bare to laureate head, and from looser to neater lettering, in the course of gold and silver from AD 37-38 (with TR P). There were changes also in the forms of the head, nose and (most important) eye. Rome was the mint for gold and silver under Nero, in all probability(...) no evidence for transference from Lyons to Rome can be adduced for Claudius; and thus the internal changes of detail in the coins of Gaius argue for transference in 37-38.
    It should be noted that, although there is no strict parallelism of type between Gaius’ gold and silver and Gaius aes, there is a strong parallelism of concepts such as would have been natural if all imperial coinage was centralized in Rome.»

    This is basically the argument. Not really sure if I’m buying it, I think the denarii of Claudius has a great deal of variation with regards to both details and clockwise/counterclockwise lettering.
    It’s interesting to read, though, that these subtle differences are what the experts are going on. Thank you again for getting me on the track with Sutherland. :)
     
  5. svessien

    svessien Senior Member


    8832D60A-9C1A-4FE7-A53D-281A28DE8361.jpeg
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page