A couple of months ago mix_val added
his Orbiana collection to
his Gallery and I commented, in the
Member's Gallery board:
"It occurs to me that Orbiana's middle bronzes presumably come both in
red copper, her As, and in yellow brass, her
dupondius. Unfortunately I have never examined her middle bronzes in any large
collection with this point in mind.
Vienna would be a
good place to start, because it is very rich in
Roman coins and tends to have multiple specimens of undercollected series like middle bronzes, and because one of its curators over a century ago, I suspect
Friederich Kenner, decided to determine the metal of all of their middle bronzes by lightly filing one spot on the edge of every heavily patinated piece in the
collection until he hit metal!
"J.
Mamaea was the first lady whose
dupondii, sometime during the reign of her son, were typologically marked by placing a crescent behind her shoulders, analogous to the
radiate crown of the emperor. The fact that
Orbiana has no
dupondii so marked suggests that this innovation took place after the year or so of her marriage to
Severus Alexander, c. 226-7 AD."
A week or two after
writing that I was at the
ANS in
New York City and checked their
Orbiana collection. They have several middle bronzes, but generally without exposed metal, so I found it hard to determine for sure whether they were
red asses or yellow
dupondii.
Recently I came across the specimen illustrated below, which is definitely of yellow metal and so a
dupondius, provided that it is ancient and not a modern
cast.
It came from our forgery cabinet, and I can't exclude that it might be a
cast, but I am about 2/3 convinced that it was wrongly condemned and is in fact ancient!
10.04 g, 11h.
