A Kolophon hemiobol reattributed to Magnesia

The ancient city of Kolophon (sometimes spelt Colophon in the literature), is located in Ionia, Asia Minor. The ruins are situated to the south of the Turkish town of Degirmendere.

The standard reference work for the ancient coins was published by J G Milne in 1941, (Kolophon and its coinage: a study, American Numismatic Society Numismatic Notes and Monographs 96). The publication date betrays the difficulties in academic pursuit and this is noted by the author in the introduction. He says that:

“Before the interruption of international relations in Europe, I was collecting material for a monograph on the coinage of Kolophon: it seems improbable that I shall be able to complete it on the original plan; but it may be worth while to put on record the facts ascertained and the conclusions they suggest”.

I happened to be leafing through a 1990s Spinks Numismatic Circular report on a parcel of Ionia fractional silver coins and a Kolophon piece was the subject of a reattribution.

The type in question is a silver fraction, a hemiobol, features a right facing head described as being of Artemis on the obverse, Milne considering it to have feminine features. On the reverse there is a shallow incuse quadripartite square with a pellet in the centre. Milne lists it as a type from Kolophon from after 490 BC, number 18 in his catalogue.

The Spink paper cites a later reference that questions the Kolophon origin. Colin Kraay, in a 1962 Schweizer Numismaticshe Rundschau paper (Monnaies provenant du site de Colophon), suggests an alternative, possibly Magnesia ad Maeandrum. He puts forward the alternative based on the uncertainty of the head on the obverse, preferring an identification of it as being male and that of Apollo. He also believes that the type is too abundantly encountered for the relative unimportance of Kolophon at the time. He therefore suggests that Magnesia ad Maeandrum may be the more likely origin of the type, particularly as the city is known to have used an image of Apollo on the later coins issued by Thermistocles, c. 460 BC.

This is the difficulty when there is no city ethnic. Attributions have to be made based on criteria such as find location and continuity of themes in the design.

A Severus Alexander multi city provincial die link

This provincial bronze of Severus Alexander from Abydus in Troas (Conventus of Adramyteum) is interesting, to me at least, for a couple of reasons. The architectural reverse of a temple pictured in perspective is a unique variant with the gable end to the left, all other extant specimens have the pediment to the right.

What is perhaps more interesting than the design variation is that this coin is die linked to three other cities. Dario Calomino published, in the Burnett festschrift, a set of die links, building on Konrad Kraft”s pioneering work from the early 1970s, that demonstrates a level of organisation and control beyond what was expected in the Roman provincial coinage. Rather than individual cities striking their own, often intermittent, coinage there was, in some circumstances, a centralisation of production. This is something that we don’t always appreciate. I've paced my specimen on top of specimen 6 in the above illustration. 

Thus we have a coin here that shares an obverse die with coins of Sestus (Chersonesus, Thrace) [coins 5, 9], Methymna (Lesbos) [coins 8, 10] and Eresus (Lesbos) [coin 7]. 

The infant Dionysus on a bronze of Nicaea

A number of years ago I picked up a small (15mm) bronze of Geta, as Caesar, from Nicaea in Bithynia. The reverse design features the young Dionysus riding on a panther to the right.

Searching for a catalogue reference, as the particular volume of Roman Provincial Coinage (RPC V.2) is not yet available I had to resort to the older standard catalogues for the series. Waddington's Receuil Générale volume covering Nicaea came up with nothing. Similarly, SNG von Aulock nothing.

The coin proved to have no published reference available. That was the case for over fifteen years until, by chance and looking for something else, I came across the 2004/5 volume of the American Numismatic Journal paper listing new acquisitions of the ANS. There, in the new purchases, was an example of the Geta coin. The accompanying note, reproduced below, acknowledged that no comparable specimen had been found in the references available to them, more prolific than mine.

The, earlier this month I was directed to a, specialised collection being offered at auction later in September. Gorny and Mosch in sale 306 are seeing the collection of Prof. Dr. Wolfram Weiser of coins of Nicaea. Browsing through it there is, at lot 1249, another example of the Dionysus small bronze of Geta (see below) . Yet again they are struggling for a specimen to cite, other than the ANS specimen and choose to reproduce the text of the ANS note.

A hemiobol from Kasolaba in Caria

AR hemiobol, late 5th/early 4th cent BC, Obverse - Male head right with Carian inscription, Reverse - Head of goat right

Ancient Greek coins can prove problematic to attribute with certainty, even by academics and museum curators. This can be particularly so when the name of the mint city is incomplete and compounded with uncertain find spot locations. 

Take, for example, the small coin above. In the 1890's it was attributed to an issue by Abdemon in Salamis on the island of Cyprus and it appeared in the BMC Greek Cyprus volume when it was published in 1904, numbers 42-44. However, that was not the only attribution given to these pieces and Kebren in Troas was also suggested and you find the type in the 1894 BMC Greek Troas volume, number 14.

These two competing attributions stood until the 1980's when Hyla Troxell identified that the script on the coins contained a letter that only occurred in Carian script, an S form made of two overlapping C's. She also had the benefit of some find spot information that strengthened a Carian origin for the coins. She pitched for the mint being located at Halikarnassos.

The relatively recent decipherment of Carian script points to these coins having an ethnic beginning "azo". That would appear to rule out Halikarnassos. The recent translation of an inscription from Sekkoy points to another location in the right vicinity, the city of Kasolaba, sited somewhere between Halikarnassos and Mylasa. The missing guttural initial of the Carian ethnic "azo" is not unknown in the language and is not apparently surprising.

So, the new coin producing poleis of Kasolaba is now the preferred mint city for this prolific issue of diminutive hemiobols, c.0.45 grammes in weight. 

Rouen transporter Bridge token

Although it is British machine tokens I mainly look for occasionally I pick up tokens from other countries. One such is this 5 centime token to cross the transporter bridge in Rouen.

I’ve crossed the similar bridge in Middlesborough over the Tees. It’s really a flying ferry, the vehicles all collect on a short road section that is suspended below the gantry and literally carried by the crane to the opposite bank.

The Rouen bridge was built in 1898 and destroyed by the French army on 9th June 1940 to try and delay the advance of the German army during World War II.

The denarius of Lucius Papius

This Roman Republican denarius, issued by Lucius Papius c. 79 BC (Crawford 384/1) is known for the use of a, huge series of control marks on both the obverse and reverse. When compiling his catalogue in the 1970s Crawford identified 211 pairs, each pairing of symbols has only one pair of dies, and of which this is pairing 119 (twin yoke on the obverse, behind the head of Juno Sospita, and a cart on the reverse, below the leaping griffin).

I had never really contemplated what the control marks were actually meant to be controlling, that was until I came across Harlan’s two books on the Roman Republican Moneyers. He suggests that it is to stop theft or work slacking by the mint workers producing the coins. As each pairing of marks were from single dies it, presumably each assigned to a single worker, would be easy to detect if, on a daily basis (or whatever frequency) a particular pairing was deficient in number produced compared with the other pairings. 

Another feature of this series, in common with the products of some other moneyers, is the serrated edge to the coin. The serrated edge is individually chiseled onto each coin blank before the design is struck. The reason is unclear. Some say it is to demonstrate that the coin is silver through and through, not plate metal on a base metal core. Crawford doubts this as there are unserrated coins produced in the same period as serrated ones. Because of that Crawford suggests that the serrated flan is merely an artistic choice. To me that seems a little odd, and Harlan postulate that it is another method of deterring theft by the mint workers. The serrated edge is to make the coins look uncomfortable to swallow to then recover later after the natural course of events!    

The Lupercal on a coin of Marcus Aurelius

 

Marcus Aurelius, As, RIC 1247

At the recent Harrogate coin fair I found this “middle bronze” in a pick box. This as, dating to the last three months of Marcus Aurelius’ life, has on the reverse the wolf and twins set within a shrine.

Located at south-western corner of the Palatine was a cave that was traditionally the lair of the wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus. It was made into a shrine containing a statue of the wolf and twins, the Lupercal, and that is the monument depicted on this coin.

The decorated grotto under the Domus Livia

It has been claimed that a grotto, decorated with mosaics and shells, excavated under the Domus Livia, the house of Augustus, is the actual location of the Lupercal. This identification is disputed and an alternative interpretation of the find is either a triclinium or nymphaeum dating from Neronian times.

The supposed site of the cremation of Septimius Severus

The demise of Septimius Severus in York in February 211 was before the anticipated return to Rome with Caracalla and Geta, his two sons. This return was foretold on the bronze coinage of all three of them, if the FORT(una) RED(ux) reverse is interpreted correctly.

Geta, 209-212, AE As, FORT RED TRP III COS II SC

Rather than transport a corpse back to the eternal city the likelihood is that he was cremated locally.

There is, in Acomb/Holgate, a spot known as Severus Hill. It is in the V between Poppleton Road and York Road and can be spotted by the water tower on top. 

There was 19th century speculation that was the spot of the funeral pyre of the dead emperor, logical given the prominent location of the hill overlooking the fort and vicus. Some even thought that it was artificially created for the occasion, but geological investigation shows it to be a natural feature. 

From the hill York Minster can be seen. In Roman times it was the location of the fort headquarters. It is evident that the prominent location of Severus Hill would have been an appropriate location for the pyre to be seen by the troops and the civilian residents of Eboracum. 

Close by, this is commemorated in street names; Severus Avenue and Severus Street, off York Road. The tile shop located at the end of Severus Street has a wonderful modern bust of the deceased emperor.

Septimius Severus enters Rome (eventually)

Septimius Severus, sestertius, ADVENTVI AVG FELICISSIMO AVG SC (RIC 719c)

Here is a sestertius of Septimius Severus with IMP VIII at the end of the obverse legend (dated by RIC to AD 196). With the ADVENTVI AVG FELICISSIMO SC reverse (RIC 719c) I had always assumed it marked the return to Rome after the Eastern campaign, as indicated by the "Liberalities" table on page 72 of RIC (see below). This was also the explanation of Clive Foss in Roman Historical Coins (1990). Curtis Clay, however, put me right.

Liberalities from RIC IV, page 72

In his unpublished 1972 thesis he established that the traditional chronology of 195-7 was wrong: Byzantium actually fell in summer 195 (reflected as IMP VI or VII in imperial titulature). The previous chronology was based on the assumption that the siege of Byzantium lasted three full years, that is until summer 196, because Dio Cassius says it lasted “an entire three-year period”. Clay suggested what Dio meant was actually “two full years and into the third”. Byzantium fell in summer 195 not 196.

The break with Albinus and elevation of Caracalla to the Caesarship occurred in November 195, by which time Severus was in Viminacium; he then marched directly to Gaul, as noted by the historian Herodian, and defeated Clodius Albinus on 19 February 196 not 197. The adjustment in chronology allows the IMP VIII title to be associated with this victory in Gaul.

Septimius Severus, sestertius, Victory over Clodius Albinus (RIC 725)

Around late summer 196 Severus returned to Rome, resulting in this coin type. The “felicissimus”, or joy, in the reverse legend being rather ironic. The entry of Severus to Rome resulted in the death of ten senators as punishment for the Senate’s support of Albinus.

Septimius Severus, sestertius, PROFECTIO AVG SC (RIC 728)

Late spring-early summer 197 he made Caracalla Pontifex and Imperator Destinatus, gave games (MVNIFICENTIA AVG) and his second largesse (LIBERALITAS AVG II) to the people of Rome, and departed on his second Parthian campaign (PROFECTIO AVG).

Septimius Severus, denarius, PROFECTIO AVG (RIC 91)