The quinquennalia of Carausius

It is surprising how taking a fresh look at a worn coin will give you a different reading and that has happened to me with this coin:

Carausius 287-93
Antoninianus
Obv"IMP CARAVSIVS P AV"
Radiate, draped and cuirassed bust right
Rev "[VO]TA QVI C[AE]"
Roma seated on shield left
-/-//[MX?]
RIC - (cf 1095)

I thought it had read ROMA CONS, however, what I thought was ON at the top of the coin is actually QVI and is actually a coin from his quinquennalia, the vows discharged after five years reign and looking forward another 5 years to his decennalia or 10th anniversary (MX below the seated Roma, not really visible on this coin being short for "MVLTIS 10").

I was familiar with the two or three known similar examples and even commented on the similarity of my specimen without making the final leap into attributing as such. Re-examination of the reverse lettering has now confirmed it for me, after being mis-identified for eight years or so.

The Frome Hoard of Carausius

I was invited down to the British Museum yesterday by Sam Moorhead for lunch and to discuss the work he’s currently doing on Carausius, both with the recent Frome hoard and the older Elveden hoard.

As well as seeing the small public display I got to have a quick look at the rest of the hoard, bagged and in boxes and most of it awaiting conservation, as well as the two denarii and a handfull of already conserved coins not on public display.

The denarii are as impressive as the pictures, if not more so and far exceed the quality of the remaining Carausian denarii in the BM's collection.

What is interesting is that the hoard has been carefully excavated down through the pot and seems to have been assembled from smaller pots. The reason for this hypothesis is that it seemingly terminates with London B/E coins (c.290) yet the greatest concentration of Carausius coins by far, including these terminal coins, was in the middle layer. The denarii, struck early in the reign, were found in the upper layers.

Hopefully a small booklet will be out shortly, within a week or two, to summarise the hoard (similar to what was produced for the West Midlands Saxon gold finds) with a full academic publication in due course.

An Edward Jekyll update.......

It's been a while since I posted here but (hopefully that will change).

I can report a small update in identifying the Edward Joseph Jekyll named on a Victorian bookplate (see HERE for the original posting).

I was leafing through Harrington Manville's book 'British Numismatic Auction Catalogues, 1710-1984' when I came across a sale catalogue of Sotheby's from 15-16 June 1915 which listed the collection of early British, Anglo Saxon and English coins of Edward Joseph Jekyll of Ampthill.

As the younger Captain Edward Jekyll died in 1921 I suspect that this is his collection (and therefore he was the previous owner of the book in the original post). That is not to say that any collection or library of the elder Edward Jekyll wasn't passed down to his son.

Seleucia ad Tigrim

I recently came across this small bronze in a group of coins purchased for stock. I don’t normally do much with Greek coinage but it looked interesting and easy enough to identify.

It turns out to be a coin assigned to a mint at Seleucia ad Tigrim (a different city called Seleucia to the previous post), although the city ethnic does not appear on the coin the authorities appear to be confident over that part of the attribution, but from what date?

Ostensibly the coin bears a date of 224 but how does that translate to our own era? In a footnote to BMC (Greek) Parthia from 1903 there is the suggestion that if this is the Seleucid era it should be 89/8 BC, however the character of the coin may mean that it is later in date and uses a local dating era. An earlier misreading gave these coins a date of 324 in the Seleucid era, clearly in error, and there was speculation of them being issued at a time when the city was in revolt.

BMC (Greek) Mesopotamia from 1922, in which the coin is actually catalogued, again has this speculation but is no further on with a date attribution.

The coin is available for purchase by either following the link on the top left (although people using Firefox as a browser may experience some difficulty logging in) or may be reserved by expressing an interest in a comment to this post.

Gallienus from Seleucia

I have a passion for the provincial coins and this one just came my way as an unidentified coin of Macrinus (217-8) when it is, in reality, a coin of Gallienus (253-68). The mint city is Seleucia ad Calycadnum in Cilicia.

Obverse: AV K Π ΛK ΓAΛΛIHNOC, draped, cuirassed and laureate bust right, seen from behind

Reverse: CEΛEVKEΩN KAΛVKAΔNΩ, Athena stg. right, shield in left hand, stabbing with spear a Giant with snakelike feet, who kneels before her; he grabs her spear with left hand and has a rock in his raised right hand. Rare.

The reverse shows a scene of the Gigantomachia. After Zeus has locked up the Titans in the Tartaros, Gaia sets her sons, the Giants, on the Olympic gods. They are human shaped with snakelike feet. The battle occurred at Phlegra. The Giants throw rocks and mountains. They couldn't be killed by gods, only by humans. So Herakles came into play. He shot a poisoned arrow on Alkyoneus and dragged him over the frontier where he died. Athena threw the island of Sicily on another Giant, where he was buried. His fire breathing comes out of the volcano, Mount Etna, until today.

Seleucia ad Calycadnum is located a few miles from the mouth of the Calycadnus river in south-central Mersin province of Turkey, 80 km (50 mi) west of the city of Mersin. It is now known as Silifke.

An almost perfect coin of Aurelian....

I want to feature here a coin that is almost perfect, a beautifully detailed coin of the Roman emperor Aurelian (270-5AD). It will also give me the opportunity to correct a slight error in the catalogue reference number in the sales description (mea culpa!).

Silvered antoninianus, RIC V 254, MIR (Göbl) 225c1 (not c2 as I list in the sales description)

Siscia mint, obverse IMP C AVRELIANVS AVG, radiate and cuirassed bust right; reverse ORIENS AVG, Sol standing left holding globe in left and raising right, right foot on captive, second captive to right, * in left field, P in exergue

This is a truly superb coin with well detailed features, every fleck of hair and detail on the emperor's cuirass (armour) is evident. Click on the picture for an enlarged version to enhance the detail.. It also retains the full silver coating of the period.

These coins are about 5% silver, the remaining metal composition being bronze. The imiscibility, or "unmixability" of copper (the major constituent of bronze) and silver was exploited by the Romans to produce coins that looked like silver when they were new but soon betrayed their base metal core.

This coin can be purchased, guaranteed for a lifetime as genuine, by following the link at the top left of this page.

An update to the origins of Mauseus

I had always assumed that the name "Mauseus", as part of Carausius' names, had come from Germanic or Britannic origins but that may not be the case. In the new Numismatic Chronicle (volume 169, 2009) there is the latest in a series of papers by Richard Ashton on the ancient coins of Rhodes. This particular paper is about a specific series of bronze coins that have the name of an official on "Mousais". Could it be that the origins are much further south and derive from the Greek?