Mauseus: December 2021

The latter half of the third century saw the number of Roman mints beginning to expand, and, at the same time, the number of mints striking the civic coins go into rapid decline. The new mints are usually not named on the coins and we need to use find spots and style to propose mint locations.

It is against this background that we see a series of coins beginning late in the reign of Gallienus and continuing into Claudius II marked with SPQR on the reverse.

RIC is of little help here in that it gives them to “Asia” under Gallienus, perhaps Antioch as pellets on the obverse are sometimes seen under the bust on the obverse, similar to the Antioch coinage of Trebonianus Gallus. For Claudius II it places them at Cyzicus, recognising that the later coins marked MC are stylistically similar.

In 1975 a paper in the British journal, Numismatic Chronicle, recognised that the SPQR series under Gallienus may be Cyzicus, but the author suggested that all the Asian sole reign coins of Gallienus were from the same location, eliminating Antioch as a mint from the time.

Gysen proposed an arrangement that agreed that the SPQR coins were ultimately produced at Cyzicus, but the original location was Smyrna (CENB 1999). The change in location was proposed to have taken place early in the reign of Claudius, recognised in the coinage by a first emission of unmarked coins, the adoption of the MC mark for the second before reverting back to SPQR for the third and dropping all marks again for the fourth and final emission.

Huvelin supported the idea that Smyrna may have been the original locus of the mint. This was based partially on stylistic criteria, but also on the commonality of a reverse device, an Amazon holding a bipenis, that occurred on both the civic issues from the city and an antoninianus type of Gallienus.

Gysen’s arrangement is not ideal, given the transition of marks, SPQR to MC to SPQR to nothing. It is not the organisation adopted by the BnF for the cataloguing work in preparation of the RIC revision. The SPQR coins attributed to Smyrna seem to be limited to the first emission through to early 269. After this date the establishment ceases and production transferred to Cyzicus and there is a mixture of SPQR, MC and unmarked coins, depending on the emission.

GALLIENUS

Emission 1 ABVNDANTIA AVG (MIR 1524c) Smyrna