Septimius Severus - I need help

Discussion in 'Ancient Coins' started by dougsmit, Sep 23, 2017.

  1. dougsmit

    dougsmit Member

    I went to a coin show Friday and the usual suspects followed me home. Some were half decent coins but not high enough grade to attract most people. Some were interesting enough I was willing to forgive their faults. Some were just mistakes caused by my desire to justify driving over 150 miles to attend the show. This first coin is in a category yet to be determined. I need help understanding what I see or, perhaps seeing what is there.

    Here is what I see and/or 'know'.
    re3300fd1294.jpg
    The coin is a mess. The flan is poor for a 193 AD Septimius Severus Legionary denarius with porosity and blotchy color ruining any chance the seller had of selling the coin to anyone but me. He had known me for 30 years so there was no hiding that and we both knew it.

    The seller read the reverse as LEG VII ITALL / TRP COS. I am a little bothered by the first L being a little C-like and do note that the tops of some letters are off flan, that some letters are a bit different in 'font' and there are no coins known that read with that legend. Other than that, I'm OK with his attribution. My 'tradiditionally oriented' mind says that LEG VII coins should read LEG VII CL / TRP COS. If I look at that next to last L, I could accept it as the lower part of the expected C but that fails to explain the mess the seller read as ITA.

    Looking at the obverse is similarly confusing to me. Legionary obverses should read IMP CAE L SEPT SEV PERT AVG. With imagination I see T SEV PERT ---maybe. Past the PERT or upside down at the bottom of the coin are come other letters which I will not give here because i do not want to pollute your mind with a mixture of what I see and what I imagine. The portrait is a little strange for a LEG VII from Rome but neither of the Eastern mints issued coins for VII. Their LEG VIII coins have AVG following the numeral and I can not see those letters on the reverse. The portrait has a little Eastern flavor - perhaps even a little Alexandrian but that is my imagination. Of course I would love to find a previously unknown legionary variety but my earlier observation that the L of LEG was curved keeps open the chance of the coin being barbarous. Scholars readily dismiss anything thy can as barbarous and they may be right.

    The coin I would most love to own was in the collection of my late friend Roger Bickford-Smith and was last seen in storage at the British Museum. It was a denarius of Septimius Severus overstruck on an earlier denarius showing only the letters CPESC from the undertype. Those letters are enough to ID the undertype as a Pescennius Niger. I would love to be able to demonstrate this coin was struck over an earlier coin of anyone. That the undertype here might be a Niger would be a dream. Now we are back to the question of what letters we see on obverse and reverse that contributed to the confused reading and whether those letters were from these dies or are evidence of an undertype. This is the hobby as I know it. Will this coin be a favorite or just another mistake I made at a show?
     
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  3. Bing

    Bing Illegitimi non carborundum Supporter

    Love the coin Doug. Where was it struck? It doesn't look like Rome mint.
     
  4. zumbly

    zumbly Ha'ina 'ia mai ana ka puana

    Not that my opinion should mean much next to yours, but between previously unknown, unofficial, overstruck with undertype showing, and official with legend errors, I'd lean towards unofficial on account of the portrait and 'off' legends. It looks like CL to me. That said, none of the options are really satisfactory. Cool coin!
     
  5. dougsmit

    dougsmit Member

    That is one of the questions that we want to know about all coins, unofficial or not. Mint assignments are pretty certain for many coins and conjectural for others. I like mystery coins even if they are just unofficial.
     
  6. John Anthony

    John Anthony Ultracrepidarian

    It has the character of an Eastern bust, the long face and pointed beard. It's the sort of bust found frequently on the provincial coinage of the Levant. Here's a bronze I recently acquired of Hierapolis...

    ss hierapolis.jpg

    This points out one of the reasons I transitioned from modern to ancient - not everything is known about ancient coins, and much of it is just plain unknowable. If you don't relish mystery, ancient coins are not for you.
     
    Bing likes this.
  7. dougsmit

    dougsmit Member

    Yup!
    Wow! Rather than fantasizing that my coin was an unknown issue of a known mint, we can suggest that it was a new mint set up to sanitize coins of Pescennius Niger using Severan types. Was LEG VII active in Syria at this time? Would an operation in the Levant possibly use that number as the legion familiar to them? We dream.
     
  8. John Anthony

    John Anthony Ultracrepidarian

    Well if you're willing to see another "I" on your coin, LEG VIII fought for Severus in Parthia, which at the time extended well into Eastern Syria. This is exactly the area in which one finds these types of busts. (I should note that my coin is from the Hierapolis of Syria as opposed to the one of Anatolia.)
     
  9. maridvnvm

    maridvnvm Well-Known Member

    A fascinating coin that poses far more questions than answers.

    The obverse legend is unclear and problematic. It does seem to end IMP VII or IMP VIII. I see what looks like a T at around 1 o'clock and work forward from there. It is very difficult to make out if the letters are there or not and whether it's me inserting them in the right place.

    The portrait style originally struck me as Alexandrian but this makes no sense with the legend. The style seems more Oriental than Roman and it wouldn't be out of place with the eastern IMP VIII series though it doesn't match any of the dies I am aware of.

    The reverse poses more questions. The legend is odd but then we know that odd things can happen with these. The legend style looks more consitent with Alexandria but the Alexandrian eagles seem to stand on a broader pillar rather than a thinner pole as on the other mints. The depiction of the eagle or wings is not as refined as the COS II mint issues.

    I honestly don't know how I would attribute it but would tentatively place it for comparison with the eastern IMP VIIIs and watch out for more information.

    I have a few oddities that pose a similar number of problems. The following certainly falls in that category.

    [​IMG]
     
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