A nice acquisition!
Not entirely unlisted, however.
A middle-bronze
reverse of this
type, apparently from the same die as your coin, and presumably also a
dupondius although the
obverse is not depicted, is shown in the drawings of coin
types printed for O. Voetter's lecture on the chronology of the undated coins of
Severus Alexander, delivered in
Vienna on 1 March 1899, pl. 5. Presumably
Voetter had seen such a coin in a private
collection, perhaps the very rich
Trau collection which was dispersed in 1935.
A specimen of this
dupondius was also shown in Numismatikforum by the Swiss middle-bronze collector Gabriel in Jan. 2014. Apparently from the same dies as yours: see
his picture below.
Apparent date of this
Providentia type: 223 AD. You point out that a silver
quinarius with the same
type has a dated
legend of 223,
P M TR P II
COS P P. Moreover, a
dupondius in my
collection seems to be from the same
obv. die as your
PROVIDENTIA AVG coin, and has
rev. PONTIF MAX TR P II
COS P P,
Securitas seated l. before
altar.
It is curious that this
PROVIDENTIA AVG type is common on
denarii, but very
rare in bronze (only these
dupondii known). Similarly, the
PAX AETERNA AVG type is common on
denarii, but in bronze only very
rare sestertii are known. A possible explanation occurs to me. In 222 Alexander's bronzes used the same
rev. types as
his aurei and
denarii, but in 223 the
rev. types of
his bronzes diverged from those of
his precious metal coins. Perhaps the
PROVIDENTIA AVG and
PAX AETERNA AVG types were introduced together early in 223, and at first the plan was to strike bronzes with the same
types, as in 222, but very soon it was decided to vary the bronze
types, so
PROVIDENTIA AVG was replaced by
PROVIDENTIA DEORVM, and
PAX AETERNA AVG was replaced by Pax seated left with dated
legend PONTIF MAX TR P II
COS P P.
If the
rare PROVIDENTIA AVG dupondii were indeed struck at the same time as the
rare PAX AETERNA AVG sesterii, then we can expect that both
types were originally struck in both
denominations, so
PROVIDENTIA AVG sestertii and
PAX AETERNA AVG dupondii may remain to be discovered.