Legend errors for Gallus and Volusian at Seleucia ad Calycadnum

[curtislclay]

Gallus: AV K ΓAI OVAI TP - E - BΩ ΓAΛΛOC. See image below from CoinArchives Pro.

OVAI must be meant for Gallus' known name Vibius. On other provincial coins that name is rendered (according to Münsterberg's Kaisernamen)

BI, BIB, BEIB, BEIBI, or

OV, OVI, OVIB, OVEIB, OVEIBI, OVEIBIOC.

OVAI is strange, especially since Seleucia used the standard and correct OVIB to render the same name on its coins of Volusian, as we will see in a moment!

ΓAI is also unusual for Gallus' praenomen Gaius, usually abbreviated G or C in Latin, and Γ in Greek. However, Münsterberg records another ΓAI at Colybrassus, and a number of ΓA spellings, including for Volusian at Seleucia, as we are about to see.

Volusian: AV K ΓA OVIB CABIN ΓAΛΛOC. Again, see image from CoinArchives Pro below. For ΓA and OVIB, see discussion above.

At first one might want to attribute this legend to Trebonianus, since Volusian's key name Volusianus is omitted. However, if it were Trebonianus, why omit TPEBΩ, which Seleucia had certainly included on its larger-denomination coins of Trebonianus? (See above.) And if Trebonianus, how to explain the Sabin(us) or Sabin(ius) in the legend, which was certainly not a name of Trebonianus'?

Now "Sabin" was not a name of Volusian's either, but Volusian did have the unusual name Afinius, which in Greek would be AΦINIOC or AΦEINIOC. Apparently this name made no sense to the responsible official in Seleucia, who decided to "correct" it to the more familiar CABIN. In adopting this solution to the problem, RPC IX p. 274 points to several other provincial mints which, apparently like Seleucia, used the names Afinius and Gallus for Volusian, but omitted Volusianus.

[curtislclay]

Interpreting CABIN on these coins of Seleucia, occurring on both of the mint's two obverse dies for Volusian, as a mistaken "correction" of AΦIN is a nice solution to the problem, and one wonders who thought it up.

The RPC authors, A. Hostein and J. Mairat, credit the idea to D.H. Cox, A Tarsus Coin Collection in the Adana Museuum, ANS MNM 92, 1941, p. 33, but Cox, while attributing the legend to Volusian on the basis of the supposedly youthful portrait, went on to suggest that Volusian had actually assumed the name Sabinius, not that CABIN was Seleucia's mistake for AΦIN.

Cox cites a discussion by von Kolb in Num. Zeitschrift 1877, p. 388, who according to Cox pointed out the youthfulness of the portrait, and presumably also assigned the legend to Volusian and accepted Sabinius as one of that emperor's correct names, though I have been unable to confirm this by reading von Kolb's actual words.

It was a misattribution which brought up this question for me: a member of the German Numismatikforum who specializes in Gallienus bought one of these Volusian coins with CABIN because the dealer had misattributed it to Gallienus. When other forum members and I pointed out that it was actually a coin of (as we thought at the time) Trebonianus Gallus, the collector was willing to cede it to me for the price he had paid.

Eventually I found the correct solution, Volusian with legend mistake, in RPC. A little later I discovered that I had actually had that same idea myself, but had forgotten about it! In his Greek Imperial Coins of 1982, David Sear described and illustrated one of the CABIN coins as no. 4390, and commented, "The name 'CABIN' (Sabinus?) on this issue is otherwise unknown." At some point I wrote in, "Mistake for 'Afinius', cf. 4392?" 4392 is a coin of Volusian from Tarsus naming the emperor AΦI ΓAΛON (sic, with only one Λ in ΓAΛON).

My example (see below) has an isolated Ω beneath the figure of Athena fighting a giant on the reverse. It is the last letter of the long ethnic, CEΛEVKEΩN TΩN ΠPOC KAΛVKAΔNΩ, for which the engraver ran out of space; for KAΛVKAΔNΩ he managed to fit in only K/AΛN-Ω, leaving out the four letters VKAΔ.

[curtislclay]

I noted above that OVAI in Trebonianus' legend was odd if intended for 'Vibius': it should have been OVEI.

Judging from the photographs in RPC online and CoinArchives Pro, however, that supposed 'A' could also be an 'Λ'. I can never see any trace of the crossbar that should be present to transform an 'Λ' into an 'A'.

Now that missing crossbar could just be the result of wear on the specimens or the die or a trick of lighting and photography; or maybe the engraver himself left out the crossbar though he meant the letter to be an 'A'.

If the absence of a crossbar is actual and intentional, however, then the letter is an 'Λ' and the beginning of the legend would appear to be not

AV K ΓAI OVAI but

AV K ΓA IOVΛI.

On some specimens one can perhaps see a faint period between A and I, which would confirm the separation ΓA IOVΛI.

So did the mint of Seleucia misunderstand a title of Gallus' too, writing not only 'Sabin' instead of 'Afin' for Volusian, but 'Iouli' (Latin 'Julius' or 'Julianus') instead of 'Vibi' for Gallus?

It would appear that Seleucia used only this single obverse die for Gallus: in any case all relevant illustrations in RPC online 1331-1333 and in CoinArchives Pro seem to me to come from the same obverse die. (Under RPC 1332, however, one of the coins illustrated, spec. 33, is mistakenly of Valerian not Treb. Gallus, so is of course from a different obv. die!) If I am right, then it is misleading of RPC to note obverse die links only between one specimen of 1331, eleven of 1332, and four of 1333, implying that the other listed specimens of those coins are from different obverse dies. In my preliminary opinion all specimens of RPC 1331-3 are from the same obverse die.

[curtislclay]

If these three obv. dies - one of Gallus and two of Volusian - indeed give the emperors wrong names, then we can tentatively date their creation to c. late summer-fall 251 AD.

Not earlier, because Volusian is not just Caesar, but already Imperator, so Hostilian had already died, and Volusian had been elevated to fill Hostilian's place as joint emperor with Gallus. Gallus came to the throne and made Hostilian Augustus and Volusian Caesar in May 251; but the rarity of the coins of these two young men as Augustus and Caesar respectively proves that Hostilian cannot have lived for more than a couple of months into Gallus' reign.

Not later, because the mistakes show that engravers of these three dies had apparently never heard the names of Gallus and Volusian before! That can only have been the case near the beginning of the reign; as time progressed, Seleucia will have received more communications from or about the new emperors, including of course their full and correct names.

We cannot be sure, however, that the coins were also all struck early in the reign. Perhaps Seleucia, as a matter of practicality, continued to strike coins from these three erroneous dies even after learning the emperors' correct names.

[Jerome M]

Dear Curtis,

I read your post with great interest.

I agree with your theory regarding the coins of Gallus: indeed the only die seems to read AV K ΓA IOVΛI. We missed it in RPC IX. I will update RPC online accordingly (with due credit).

To support your point, I can only add that ΟΥΑΙ for Vibius would have no other parallel on coinage, and (anyway) ΟΥΑΙ cannot be used for ΟΥΕΙΒ / ΟΥΙΒ (even in Cilicia, I have been told).

Many thanks,

Jerome Mairat