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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;red_spork, post: 3786335, member: 74282&quot;]Those who follow John Anthony&#039;s auctions may have seen this quadrans from the Theodosius collecton in the most recent sale. The coin wasn&#039;t identified in the auction and just listed as &quot;The buyer gets to do the research on this one&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>So what was it and why did I buy it?&nbsp; To help answer that question, I&#039;ve highlighted the monogram below:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1011046[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The monogram reads OPEIMI read left-to-right. The P shares it&#039;s left leg with the left side of the E. The M also shares this leg, then we&#039;ve got an I hanging off the end. This is the monogram for a moneyer of the gens Opeimia. There are two related issues from moneyers of this same family during the 169-158 B.C. the OPEIMI shared here and also an OPEI(I&#039;ll share one of this moneyer&#039;s coins below in a follow-on post). We don&#039;t know enough about either moneyer to identify exactly who they are since we&#039;ve only got the family name but one of them may be the Q Opeimius who was elected consul in 154 B.C. That&#039;s often the case with these moneyers, many of whom either were not notable men and are only known from their coins or simply didn&#039;t leave us with enough evidence to fully determine who they were even if they may have been recorded in the histories.</p><p><br /></p><p>The quadrans of this series is quite rare with only a single example on ACSearch, the <a href="https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1102654" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1102654" rel="nofollow">RBW coll</a>=<a href="https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=300274" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=300274" rel="nofollow">Gibboni coll</a> example from the same pair of dies. That example is of course quite a bit nicer than mine but I&#039;m very happy with my example both because I&#039;m able at all to own an example of this type that has eluded many bronze collectors and also because in the grand scheme of things it&#039;s actually a relatively nice example, especially considering when it was minted. The period of 169-158 B.C. was characterized by Rome&#039;s temporary cessation of minting of silver coinage so the bronzes of the period often come much uglier and more worn than this example so it&#039;s a treat to find nice intact examples like this with clear(if confusing) monograms and all major details on the flan.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1011040[/ATTACH]</p><p>Roman Republic Æ quadrans(6.10g, 20.5mm, 7h). OPEIMI(Opemius), 169-158 B.C., Rome mint. Head of hercules right; behind ••• /Prow right; above, OPEIMI; below, ROMA; before, •••. Crawford 188/4</p><p><br /></p><p>As always, feel free to share anything relevant![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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