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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Carausius, post: 2652434, member: 76440&quot;]Circa 90 B.C., during the time of the Social War, Q. Titius and C. Vibius C.F. Pansa were co-moneyers at Rome.&nbsp; The Social War was a civil war between Rome and her Italian allies who had broken-away in a demand for citizenship rights.&nbsp; It was a time of massive coinage output by the Rome mints, likely to pay the costs associated with the conflict.&nbsp; Not much is known of TItius or Pansa.&nbsp; TItius is the only member of the TItia gens for whom coins are known.&nbsp; Pansa was possibly the father of the later Pansa who struck coins in 49 BC and became consul in 43BC.</p><p><br /></p><p>Some of Titius’ silver coin types feature a male head with long, pointed beard.&nbsp; There is speculation that the head represents Mutinus Titinus, another name of the minor god Priapus, and a naming pun for Titius.&nbsp; His AE asses overwhelmingly depict a Janiform head with atypical, long. pointy beard, resembling the head shown on his silver coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>On the other hand, obverses of Pansa’s AE asses overwhelmingly depict Janus with a more traditional, curled beard.&nbsp; The fact that the obverse styles of Pansa’s and TItius’ contemporaneous asses are so different supports the argument that the pointy-bearded character on TItius’ coins represents someone other than Janus.</p><p><br /></p><p>The fact that Titius and Pansa served as moneyers at the same time is evidenced by occasional mules of Titius’ pointy-bearded obverses with Pansa reverses and vice versa.&nbsp; Below are two AE Asses of Titius from my collection.</p><p><br /></p><p>The first coin bears Titius’ typical, pointy-bearded Janiform head on the obverse with a prow right reverse.</p><p><br /></p><p>Rome, The Republic. Rome Mint.</p><p>Q. Titius, 90BC</p><p>AE As. 8.01 grams; 27 mm.</p><p>Obv: Laureate Janiform head with pointed beard.</p><p>Rev: Prow right; Q·TITI above.</p><p>Crawford 341/4a or 4c; Sydenham 694; BMCRR 2231-2235</p><p>[ATTACH=full]586983[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The second coin, a recent acquisition, is an interesting mule pairing a Pansa, curled-beard Janus head with a rare Titius reverse depicting a right-facing prow with palm symbol behind the prow stem.&nbsp; The reverse inscription is Q. TITI, so there’s no mistaking the reverse die.</p><p><br /></p><p>Rome, The Republic. Rome Mint.</p><p>Q. Titius, 90BC.</p><p>AE As. 10.78 grams; 27 mm.</p><p>Obv: Laureate Janiform head with curled beard.</p><p>Rev: Prow right; palm symbol behind prow stem; Q·TITI above.</p><p>Crawford 341/4d; Sydenham 694b (R4); Hannover 2942</p><p>[ATTACH=full]586984[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>An online search of acsearch, Coin Archives and Coins of the Roman Republic Online yielded only four auction sales and one ANS example of this rare reverse, and all of them were paired with a pointy-bearded obverse. However, the Kestner Museum Hannover has a similar mule that may be a double die match to my coin (see Berger, Hannover 2942).&nbsp; Further, the Kestner Museum has a Pansa AE As in their collection with an apparent obverse die match to my mule (see Berger, Hannover 2974).</p><p><br /></p><p>Based on these Titius/Pansa mules what could we surmise about administrative practices at the Rome mint circa 90BC?</p><p><br /></p><p>One unlikely possibility is that obverse dies, which contained no legends, were mixed freely among the two moneyers; however, the overwhelming conformity of pointy-bearded TItius asses and curled-beard Pansa asses refutes this suggestion.&nbsp; The mules are too scarce to suggest any freewheeling intent.</p><p><br /></p><p>A second, more-likely possibility is that all dies, TItius’ and Pansa’s, were controlled by a central mint repository which assigned the dies to teams at the commencement of work shifts and likely collected them for security at the end of work shifts.&nbsp; Care was certainly taken to pair pointy-bearded Janus obverses with TItius reverses, as evidenced by the super-majority of extant coins.&nbsp; Mistakes were inevitably made.&nbsp; How long it took the mint to correct such mistakes is unclear.&nbsp; The fact that my collection and the Kestner Museum share a mule from the same dies suggests that a good number of coins were made by that die pairing, probably on the same day.&nbsp; The fact that Kestner Museum also has the same Pansa obverse die paired with a correct Pansa reverse proves that die combination was a likely mistake; whether the correct pairing was made at a previous work shift, at a subsequent work shift when dies were reassigned, or in the middle of the same work shift cannot be determined – the coins are not in such great condition that die states can be easily compared.</p><p><br /></p><p>Third, the mules suggest that TItius’ and Pansa’s coins were struck at the same mint and perhaps in the same workshop by different striking teams. Though I don’t think it’s possible to extrapolate whether the dies were controlled on a workshop basis vs. a full mint basis.</p><p><br /></p><p>Feel free to pile-on with your coins of Titius or Pansa, mules of Titius and Pansa, or your own theories.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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