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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Finn235, post: 3660196, member: 98035&quot;]Arguably one of the most popular type issues by any Roman empress, Otacilia Severa&#039;s Hippopotamus coinage highlight the gaiety of Rome&#039;s spectacular Secular Games to mark the 1,000th anniversary from her founding by Romulus. Surely it was no easy feat to capture and transport such a fantastic beast from the depths of Africa all the way to the Colosseum in Rome!</p><p><br /></p><p>Outwardly, this appears to be a regular old, fairly low grade Hippo sestertius, except for one problem - it is 24mm across and weighs only 6.67g. </p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]984003[/ATTACH] </p><p>[ATTACH=full]984004[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>(Yes, I know my scale is dusty)</p><p><br /></p><p>As the Secular games were designed to distract the public from the ongoing financial and military crisis, large number of sestertii and a limited number of middle bronzes were minted, the latter being likely used as donatives for the crowd as the denomination had been largely defunct since the middle Severan period.</p><p><br /></p><p>Which brings me to my point - I cannot find either a reference for this coin as an as, nor another example. The tag included with this coin describes it as a sestertius with a chipped edge, but the loss of 6mm off the diameter cannot cause this coin to shed about 50-75% of its original weight. I feel that beyond a doubt this coin was struck on a planchet intended for an as. But whether this is an as struck with sestertius dies, or a potentially unpublished type - I&#039;m not sure.</p><p><br /></p><p>This isn&#039;t an area of Roman numismatics I know particularly well - I&#039;d welcome insights![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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