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Message:: [QUOTE="Severus Alexander, post: 3245381, member: 84744"]My ex-Dattari version of the OP coin (officina beta):[ATTACH=full]850552[/ATTACH] And my other favourite Serapis coin, from Caracalla's first issue of the antoninianus (RIC 261d), c. 215 CE.  The reverse figure is usually described as Pluto (with Cerberus, of course), but it seems likely that it's intended to be Serapis:[ATTACH=full]850554[/ATTACH] BMCRE (1950) says the reverse figure probably represents “Serapis in his chthonic aspect” (p. ccv): "Septimius [Caracalla’s father] had paid high honour to the god [Serapis] and had sometimes introduced a special feature of his portraiture — the locks falling over the forehead — into his own portrait. Caracalla now took over and exaggerated his father’s devotion. It was all part of that advance of Eastern cults to full imperial status that had begun at least as early as the reign of Commodus, and of that excessive interest in religion (‘superstitio’ rather than ‘religio’) that marked Caracalla’s later years. The gloomy ‘underworld’ element in the cult of Serapis will have had its special attraction for the sinister young Emperor” (pp. cxcix–cc)." The first appearance of Serapis on Roman coins occurred during Caracalla’s reign only a few years earlier in 212 CE, and both Serapis and Pluto are shown on the coinage with similar attributes of scepter and polos; another of Pluto’s attributes, the cornucopia, is absent.[/QUOTE]