The provenance of an aureus of Allectus in the BM

When the late Dr Mead’s collection came up for auction in 1755 it did not include the “Oriuna” denarius of Carausius,  that had previously been given to the King of France. What it did have, however, was an aureus of Allectus, lot 110 and reproduced on the plate. The engraving of the coin is true to life showing distinctive flan imperfections, such as the partial border on the left of the reverse.  With such detail it was possible to verify, using Burnett’s paper on the coinage of Allectus (BNJ 1984) that the coin now resides in the British Museum collection.

By using the online catalogue to the BM collection we can get the accession number,  1864,1128.179, and note that the coin was acquired from Edward Wigan by gift in 1864. The online citation notes Mead as the possible source but, from the Mead engraving, that is not in doubt. Is it possible to trace more of the coins history? The answer is a resounding yes.

My original copy of the Mead catalogue is hand annotated with all the buyers names and prices. Lot 110, the aureus, fetched £21/5 and was bought by Lord Charles Cavendish. Cavendish was the youngest son of the 2nd Duke of Devonshire and the father of the scientist Henry Cavendish. 

The collection,  including the Allectus, passed through the family until 1844 when William Cavendish, 6^th   Duke of Devonshire, sold the collection through Christies (lot 1239, £10/5). It may be at this time that Wigan purchased the coin.

The online BM record card for the Allectus contains another tantalising piece of information and that is that the Allectus was found at Silchester. This provenance is not in doubt to my mind as the details of the find are recorded in the personal notes of William Stukeley and mention that the ORIENS aureus ended up in the collection of Dr Mead. The entry reads as follows:

“22 December 1748. At the Royal Society. A long account of the old Roman city of Silchester, by Mr Ward, accompanied with a ground plot from an actual survey: and an intire (sic) flat Roman brick. The streets are very visible in the corn in the dry years, especially those two crossing each other from the four gates. He says there’s one place in the city called Silver Hill, remarkable for the many silver coyns (sic) found there, and some gold. One he gave to Dr Mead, of Allectus, finely preserved, reverse ORIENS AVG, exergue ML.”

A pomegranate privy mark on a coin of Side

In the early 1970s Konrad Kraft published a work on Roman civic coins that identified a number of cities that shared obverse dies. Although familiar with his ideas I have not had the opportunity to read this work. I am lucky enough though to have a modern continuation of his ideas, George Watson’s Connections, Communities and Coinage: The System of Coin Production in Southern Asia Minor, AD 218-276 (ANS, 2019).

Watson provides a detailed account of obverse mint styles, principally four, that suggest the centralised production of dies. He stays short of postulation centralised production and also recognising that the production of flans can be separate from the production of the dies.

He also suggests that the obverses were cut for specific cities and only as an “afterlife” were they used by other cities.

Salonina,  Side,  11 assaria (revalued to 5 assaria) Watson 1738

I am fortunate to have a coin struck from a very particular die from Side in Pamphylia that he cites in support of this (I won’t rehearse all the arguments here) . Its an 11 assaria piece of Salonina (countermarked on the obverse over the IA denomination mark with an E to revalue as a 5 assaria piece) that, although showing the stylistic traits of the central cutting style of Workshop A, shows a feature that can only associate it with Side. Above the bust of Salonina is a pomegranate, the badge of Side. This die, V135 in the catalogue, although coming from the central die source could only find a sensible use at Side.

Pomegranate detail from obverse