A highly interesting
provincial coin just sold on
German eBay. Unattributed by the seller, but of course I was not the only bidder to recognize its importance! Somebody outbid me for the coin, though the winning bid and mine were more that twice as high as those of the third- and fourth-place bidders, who
had obviously also recognized the deified Gordiani I and II on the
reverse.
AVT.K.M.AN - T ΓOPΔIANO[C
CEB] Laureate
bust of
Gordian III right.
ΘEOI ΓOPΔ
IAN[OI] AVΓOVCTAN[ΩN] around, date ET HIC in upper
field, laureate, draped
bust of
Gordian I facing bare-headed, draped
bust of
Gordian II.
AE 32mm, 14.45g, seller's pictures below.
The year of issue, 218 = 237/8 AD, fits with the expectation that
Gordian III would probably have produced such a
type very soon after
his accession in 238, presenting
his credentials to become emperor, rather than at some later date in
his reign. It seems curious that
Gordian II is bare-headed, rather than laureate like
his father.
Checking
CoinArchives, I find that an apparent variant of the same coin was in CNG's E165, 30 May 2007, lot 166, 31mm, 14.03g, see their picture of the coin below. CNG's cataloguer correctly identified the
mint as
Augusta on the basis of ...ANΩN ET...at the bottom of the
reverse, but both the era date and the names of the two emperors in the
rev. type were corroded away and illegible, so the cataloguer suggested
Balbinus and
Pupienus. But the two emperors are probably actually the two Gordiani Africani, as on the
German eBay example. I think I can read an E at 9 o'clock on the
rev. edge, in the correct position for the E of ΘEOI; plus, I don't think we have any evidence that
Balbinus and
Pupienus were ever consecrated.
Kienast in
his Kaisertabelle says that their memories were apparently condemned, because their names were eradicated in several inscriptions. As far as I am aware the known
provincial coins of
Balbinus,
Pupienus, and
Gordian III all belong to the reign of
Balbinus and
Pupienus, when
Gordian III was just
Caesar, not to the reign of
Gordian III himself as
Augustus, after the deaths of
Balbinus and
Pupienus.
The
CNG and
German eBay coins are from different dies on both sides. On the
CNG piece
Gordian II is laureate, not bare-headed as on the
eBay coin; the corroded
Gordian I appears to be laureate also, but might be
radiate.
I am uncertain whether this coin of
Augusta with
rev. Gordian I and II has been published before, apart from the misdescribed
CNG piece; certainly it is not in
SNG Paris,
SNG Levante,
BMC, Ziegler's
Cilicia in Smaller
German Collections, or
Asia Minor Coins. Vis-à-vis
portraits of the deified
Gordian I and II were however used as an
obverse type at Aegeae in
Cilicia, according to
Cohen vol. V, p. 4, quoting
Sestini; there the
legend had further titles including Africani and was in the accusative not nominative case, namely
ΘEOYC ΓOPΔIANOYC CEMN AΦP CEBB.
Date Year 284 = again 237/8 AD, as was to be expected. I would guess that these coins of Aegeae are probably discussed in a
German article to which I do not have ready access, P.
Weiss, An
altar for
Gordian III, the elder Gordiani, and the
Severan Emperors from Aegeae in
Cilicia,
Chiron 12, 1982, pp. 191-205.
