To fully appreciate this coin of Hadrian that is at least tentatively defined as an uncia or 1/12th of an As ... Hadrian, 117-138 AD, Æ Uncia (9.6mm, 0.95g) Obv: Laureate head right Rev: S C in wreath Ref: RIC II 629b it should be seen in context of it's larger relative the sestertius. Some or all of these small bronzes may be from the mint of Antioch in Syria. There was apparently a metalurgical analysis that showed the metal was closer to that of coins minted in Rome than provincial coins - interested to know more about this short revival of the uncia if anyone knows more.
Wikipedia : « In Imperial times the uncia was briefly revived under Trajan (98–117) and Hadrian (117–138). This coin was about 11–14 mm in diameter and weighed about 0.8–1.2 grams. It featured the bust of the emperor on the obverse with no inscription and "SC" (for Senatu Consulto) in a wreath on the reverse. If this issue belonged to the imperial system, meaning it was not a provincial piece, it would be an uncia. This issue may have been made only for circulation in the East ».
I don't know if I buy in to these being actual uncia, but they are very cool nonetheless! Considering that a quadrans in the first century was about enough money for a meal's worth of bread (not even a whole loaf) an uncia in Hadrian's time would have been a useless denomination, especially since having coins that individually can't buy anything seems to be a relatively modern concept. I do have one extremely ugly example, pulled from a job lot because it wouldn't have added anything to leave it in the lot I was selling
I understand the logic of calling it an uncia - but is there any evidence, at all, that 2nd century Romans actually did? I note Sulla voiced doubt above, and the Wiki piece only cites a 19th century usage...... Rob T
Thanks for sharing your "unciae", I agree with @Finn235 and @EWC3 - not in a position to commit on uncia. Interesting to see the okidoki collection labelled chalkous: That's quite a nice set! I found a copy of the article with metal analysis evidence for related coins not this specific denomination. "The Minting of Roman Imperial Bronze Coins for Circulation in the East: Vespasian to Trajan", I. Carradice and M Cowell, The Numismatic Chronicle, Vol. 147 (1987), pp. 26-50 (29 pages). I will need to read again... I also saw the S C as @gsimonel did: looks like Antioch to me.
And there are some noted from there. McAlee 543 is a similar type/size, called a half quadrans or chalkous. However there is a difference. The type listed in RIC has just a laureate head. The Antioch issue has a draped and cuirassed bust. However, it may entirely be that they are of the same issue and mint, either Antioch or Rome. My bet would be on Antioch. The types issued in Rome (Tyche, Lyre, Griffin and Roma) are quite distinctive, and none were of the S C types. Either way both types are very to extremely rare.
While I agree with the group not choosing 'uncia' for a label, I bought my piece of scrap metal years ago when I thought it was cool they had an Imperial coin that small. I can't believe I paid $12 for a coin and could not convince myself who issued it? Trajan?
Thanks. My interest here is I am trying to understand the “Distributio” of Lucius Volusius Maecianus. Its on the web but to my knowledge has never been translated out of the Latin - (and my Latin is 4th rate or worse). One of the things he seems to say is that the Libra is an As. True of course some time before 200 BC, but a weird thing to say I judge by about 160 AD. Calling this coin an uncia would fit with that of course, but I am not inclined to go down that road Maecianus was a legal authority and my own guess is that his usage is some kind of otherwise archaic and very specifically legal form of language. But if anyone has any thoughts on this or other matters in Maecianus I would love to hear. Rob T PS Actually, I disagree with part of the position of @Finn235
Rob - this article might interest you - which I think does a nice review of the Distributio with some interpretation. some humor from the opening quote of Horace: "To the Greeks the Muse gave intellect and well-rounded speech; they are greedy only for praise. Roman children, with lengthy calculations, learn to divide the as into a hundred parts" a dry observation: "The reason why some subdivisions [of the as] have signs and names and others do not, is simply not given: Maecianus observes that, for instance, the as could be divided into eleven equal parts, but it is not." more relevant to this thread: "The as is subdivided into halves (semisses), thirds (trientes), fourths (quadrantes), sixths (sextantes), eighths (sescunciae), ninths (unciae duae sextulae) and twelfths (unciae) – the “elements, as it were’ of the first division (distributio)." and a comment in support @Finn235 's thought above: In practice, a lot of the money that the Distributio discusses only existed in the form of signs and names. It has been observed that small units of currency would have been little used in antiquity because the as ‘would have been adequate for many of the purchases of everyday life’. I am still left with the question of "uncia" of "chalcos" for the OP coin.
"Chalcos" gets my vote. We used to say, "That and a nickel will get you a cup of coffee." That number has changed.
Many thanks indeed. Yes, I read Cumo, and thought about getting in touch with her, as she is just up the road a way from me. I found her work very useful – but also too post-modern. She seems a Latour fan. To cut a very long story short, I fear she, Latour and Maecianus are all pretty much on the same page, but its the wrong page. They almost seem to want to confuse us. See the criticism of Latour here Case in point. There is no mystery at all about why we do not use practical weight systems based upon 11ths. Cumo seems to assist Maecianus in sending us on a wild goose chase But if I have it correctly, at this point in the text Maecianus is calling a libra an as. In which case an uncia is quite a heavy item of c. 27g. Way way too big to be the smallest weight unit for very many practical purposes. Does the the Distributio make it clear it is writing about 2nd century AD currency here? Can anyone cite the point in the text where that is made clear? I fear a weight of a libra-as of c. 327g (an as from maybe 268 BC) is being conflated, by both Maecianus and Cumo, with the value of a 10g copper coin-as of 160 AD. That would of course be absurd, a joke, like expecting a modern English "pound" coin to weigh 454g, or 350g, when in fact it weighs about 9g. Rob T
Thanks Doug - I think I needed more than a full roll of nickles for a recent coffee. My much faded high-school Latin doesn't get me very far either: the text. Is this the sentence where the libra-As connection comes from? Prima divisio solidi [id est librae], quod as vocatur, in duas partes dimidias diducitur; pars dimidia semis vocatur; nota eius S. The first division of the solidus [i.e. librae], which is called As, is divided into two halves, one half is called semis and its symbol is S.
I did some reading online - Wikipedia, Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1911 Encyc. Brit. - and they all say the same about him. So, we do not know much. OCD cites PIR2 5. 657, but I not know what that means. It also cites Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, about which read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realencyclopädie_der_classischen_Altertumswissenschaft. OCD also says: "He taught Marcus Aurelius, even writing a book on fractions and measurements for him, but failed to impress the future emperor." It might be that Maecianus was just wrong. So much was lost, and not all of what survived is authoritative. My other hobby is astronomy and, not surprisingly, the history of it, especially among the classical cultures. A thousand years after "everyone" knew that the Earth is a sphere, someone wrote that it is flat and that Jerusalem is at the center, or whatever. It is not clear who believed that except one guy. Just on the other hand, for example, when you read Aristotle, he typically begins a discourse by citing the previous authorities on the subject. Then, he gives his own explanations. So, we can check him against other works that survived to see who believed what and who cited Aristotle later. Lucius Volusius Maecianus seems to be sui generis.
Thanks for the link to the Serafina Cuomo work. I archived it to \Mathematics and to \Sociology\Numismatics and to \Numismatics but I found it not convincing in total, though informative.
I found it online here: Lucius Volusius Maecianus, Assis Distributio ... pr.1 http://216.129.112.202/loc/1285/1/0#0 Same text here https://latin.packhum.org/loc/1285/1/0#0 Cited from here: Title Assis distributio Author Lucius Volusius Maecianus Publisher Packard Humanities Institute, 1991 https://books.google.com/books/about/Assis_distributio.html?id=PDtYAQAACAAJ
I think that is where I got to too. My understanding is that the Libra was always understood at roughly 327g. The quote is from maybe 160 AD. At that date the coin we call a solidus is long in the future and as a coin it will become a sort of talent – being ultimately 6,000 coppers. Also at that date the as, taken as a libra, was ancient history even for Maecianus . So as it stands - the text seems a pretty mind bending mixing up of static weights vs moving coin values, driven by 700 years of inflation. I know of four major primary sources on Roman weights Maecianus c. 160 AD (on the web in Latin only) Favinus c. 400 AD ( on the web in French translation) Epiphanius c. 400 AD (on the web in English translation) Isidore c. 620 AD (on the web in English translation) The major commentary on these matters is on the web, but by a 19th century German (Hultsch) who wrote in Latin! (arghhhh) If anyone has trouble tracking these texts down let me know. Meanwhile it seems odd to me that the earliest of these texts, Maecianus, seems to me the most confusing, and also, is the one not available (?) in translation. By the way, all the other three texts definitely give a false or distorted version of events Rob T
