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Message:: [QUOTE="Michael Stolt, post: 3906395, member: 100445"]Here is a little write up from HjB about the type, and the later restored issue of the type by Trajan. "The restoration of this type by Trajan, with the word COCLES added to the obverse, has led to its traditional assignment to the Horatia gens. (No other coins of this family are known; the alleged denarii with Roma head and COCLES on the obverse are all modern fabrications.) It's been further deduced that the female head is thus that of Horatia, the betrothed of one of the Curiatii. Crawford typically rejects this "romantic" explanation, but offers no replacement. It's been suggested that Trajan's selection of this type and that of "Decius", with shield and carnyx symbol, for restoration, was more or less random, meant to stand in for the entire range of the early denarius coinage. This would be plausible, if the two coins were in fact typical of the broader coinage. But both are rare, of anomalous (though not identical) style, struck at uncertain but non-Roman mints. It's hardly likely that a random grab from circulation by Trajan's mint officials would obtain precisely these two early types. That the prototypes were struck, by Crawford's estimation, within the same six year period, further stretches coincidence. And the addition of COCLES, and of DECIUS MUS to the shield and carnyx piece, surely demands explanation. Is it possible that the records of a particular branch mint survived the vagaries of 300+ years, and were available to Trajan's officials? That would explain the addition of the family names (listed in these hypothetical mint records) and the selection of types (far easier to copy a prototype on file than to search for extremely worn, 300 year old denarii among the millions recalled from circulation)."[/QUOTE]

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