This coin arrived yesterday, courtesy of our fellow board member Nathan (Holding History). I posted it a few days ago in the alphabetical thread, but here is my own pic and first official attribution from RIC (volumes VII and VIII also showed up yesterday). I've added a page number to my RIC reference, mostly for my own purposes, to make the coin easier to find. I'm not sure I like the reverse pic - it's a bit too shadowy in the right field and I'll probably redo it.
Nice example. Mine is below. Helena (324 - 330 A.D) Æ3 O: FL HELENA AVGVSTA, Draped bust right. R: SECVRITAS-REIPVBLICE, Securitas standing left. Siscia Mint, 5th offcina 19mm 2.8g RIC 218
The exact same mint and officina, cool! I'm trying to wade through the very technical stuff at the beginning of the Siscia chapter in VII. I'd like to know exactly how the coins are dated. I'm sure I'll have plenty of questions for the RIC experts.
I was on a spending spree too, scoring deals and such but im on a break too. I still have 1 coin to share that ive had for 2 months. JW knows what it is since he saw it before he left for his trip lol. Ive drifted to my cheaper hobbies for the time being.
Well, what I've gathered so far is this... 1. Licinius I was in control of the Siscia Mint from 311 to 324 so we wouldn't have seen Helena's issues during that time. 2. He lost the civil war against Constantine I in 324, at which point we see coins of Constantine coming out of Siscia. 3. The Nagatétény hoard suggests a division of labor between the various officinae, with Helena assigned to Γ and Є. 4. RIC relates the nested-crescents symbol of the mint mark to another series of coins out of Siscia... In fact, scholarship since RIC sets Helena's death on 18 August 330, so it's possible her coins were minted through the first half of that year. But I'm not sure how RIC determines the mark to have started in 327 - it gives no explanation for that statement whatsoever.
Crispus and Fausta have no coins with the nested crescents but have the preceeding set with dots before and after the mintmark. It is therefore reasonable to date the nested crescent coins to the period between the death of Fausta and the death of Helena. RIC tends to use whole year dates so the coins could be from the end of the year Fausta died to the beginning of the year Helena died.
Reading page 420 middle, they suggest that the dots before and after continued after Crispus was eliminated because his workshop allocations appear in smaller numbers for other rulers. That could mean that the nested crescents started later but the large number of them for Helena (I have one, too) suggests she might not have died as early as usually accepted. All this is based on best guesses or even speculations. Coin evidence like the large number of Helena coins might be more accurate than a biography written a century later by someone who guessed when she died. This is why some of us buy RIC and some of us prefer the 'Graphic Novel' equivalents like ERIC and Dane's lists. If you want to have a date to put on an ID card, any will provide one. If you want to understand how all these coin fit together into a big picture, real RIC is hard to beat.
BTW, I wonder about Constantine for not issuing a DIVA HELENA coin. Maybe, just maybe, he understood how inappropriate this would have been for a Christian lady but that did not stop Fausta's threesome from giving him the DV coins when he died.
