Reply to Thread

Message:: [QUOTE="curtislclay, post: 7624021, member: 89514"][USER=80147]@Ancient Aussie[/USER] You were joking, I presume, that you let a coin flip decide between your purchase of a coin priced at $145,000 and another worth $500 or so? Despite the approval from the British and Fitzwilliam Museums that PeteB reproduces on his website, I am unfortunately not at all convinced of the authenticity of his Meta Sudans dupondius of Titus. In the first place, I think that both his example and the BM specimen that he shows in his discussion, which is also illustrated in the new RIC, pl. 99, no. 205, are identical modern casts. Note the identity of their centering on the flan and the details of their types and legends. I think Ted Buttrey was mistaken to see different reverse dies on these two coins because of a few small differences he thought he saw; because of the identity of everything else, these supposed differences will just be due to later tooling or different lighting and photography. The lack of sharpness of portrait and lettering on the obverse of Pete's coin (click above for enlargement) seem to me typical for a modern cast. The BM piece has been deliberately damaged, in my opinion, in order to mislead a prospective modern purchaser into thinking that it's probably authentic. Now the obverse die of these two examples has the correct Rome-mint style. Presumably they are cast reproductions of a genuine dupondius of Titus whose original reverse type, apart from the letters S - C, had been completely recut. Unfortunately I don't find the same obverse die or a reverse die with the same size and placement of S - C in a quick search through RIC, BMC, and Giard's Paris catalogue. Hopefully our Flavian specialists will check their own COS VIII dupondii of Titus for the same obverse die and for a similar S - C combined with a genuine reverse type! I was going to write: the Meta Sudans type of Titus is an old forgery, of which no genuine prototype exists as far as I know. So Cohen wrote in 1880: all Meta Sudans sestertii of Titus that I have seen are fake or doubtful. The BM acquired such a fake sestertius in 1913, BMC Titus 189, pl. 49.8 (rev. only), on which a head of Janus is shown atop the meta, spewing water left and right from both of its mouths! "Perhaps tooled on rev.", Mattingly correctly noted; in fact the reverse of the coin seems to be from the same die, completely recut, as an S - C Spes advancing sestertius also in the BM collection, no. 186, pl. 49.5; note the identical size and positioning of the letters S - C. Unfortunately this remade sestertius has found its way into the new edition of RIC, no. 165, both sides illustrated on pl. 96, though with the correct explanation in a footnote: "This unique coin has been tooled, so it is possible that the rev design was created in modern times by re-working (from a coin with Spes rev?)." However, Paris possesses what could be a genuine specimen of Titus' Meta Sudans dupondius, pl. CXXXI, no. 28 in Giard's catalogue, wrongly dismissed by him as a modern fake in my opinion, though Cohen 246 had accepted it as authentic in 1880. This coin is from different dies on both sides than Pete's specimen and the BM's. The obverse is VF and gives every appearance in the photograph of being ancient and struck. The reverse is rougher and more worn; I wouldn't exclude the possibility that it has been remade from another type, but am inclined to think that it is original, and so the first authentic Meta Sudans coin of Titus that can be found in modern collections. Hopefully our Flavian collectors will check their collections for these two dies too! If this Paris coin is authentic, that would strongly suggest that the reverse type of the other two specimens is also original rather than remade, though it wouldn't prove their authenticity, since both of them seem to be casts of another struck specimen whose present-day location is unknown.[/QUOTE]

Create my FREE Account!

Log in or Sign up

Reply to Thread

Useful Searches