"Only recently have
rare coins of this
mint for
Commodus been recognized,"
Doug Smith writes on
his site. The precise details of this discovery are not without interest.
The credit for discovering Alexandrian
denarii of
Commodus belongs mainly to Roger
Bickford-Smith.
One
type,
CONSECRATIO, has been known for a long time, but was misattributed.
Cohen 61 (60 francs) quotes a specimen from
Paris, and the BM has one too, published in
BMC IV, p. 756, pl. 100.12. See
CoinArchives specimen from
CNG auction below. Since the
obv. legend is of
Commodus alive not Divus, and the
style is non-Roman,
Mattingly considered this coin to be an ancient forgery, and nobody (me included)
had seen any reason to contradict him!
Bickford-Smith, who in the 1980s and early 1990s was assembling a private
collection (now in BM) of
Eastern denarii of Septimius and family and also
Pertinax, and who was also
writing a monograph (never published) on the Alexandrian-mint
denarii of this era, saw for the first time that these
denarii must be official products of the
mint of
Alexandria, presumably struck immediately after Septimius consecrated
Commodus in
spring 195, since they are in
good silver and show exactly the
style of Alexandrian tetradrachms of
Commodus. See for example below a
tetradrachm of Commodus' last year, Sept. 192 on, again taken from
CoinArchives and
CNG.
It was I who first came across a LIFETIME
denarius of
Commodus struck at
Alexandria, like the two examples
Doug Smith shows or links to above: the coin was in a group of pieces found in
Austria, that
had been submitted to the Numismatic Institute of the University of
Vienna for
attribution, where I saw them in November 1993. The
attribution was clear the moment I laid eyes on the coin, since
Bickford-Smith had shown me what an Alexandrian
denarius of
Commodus should look like! Since then over a dozen other specimens have turned up: it's amazing how many
rare coins are out there, once you know what to look for!
Alexandrian
denarii are understandable for
Septimius Severus, since he was campaigning in the East while the coins were struck, but how can we explain the production of such
denarii for
Commodus and
Pertinax too, neither of whom ever visited the East during their reigns?
A possible explanation occurred to me, though I am very far from insisting that it must be correct! We know that
Commodus had serious plans to visit
Alexandria, so much so that the Prefect of
Egypt built a new bath building for him there to enjoy when he arrived, but the trip never came off before Commodus' assassination on 31 December 192.
Possibly Commodus' Alexandrian
denarii, dated to 192, the last year of
his reign, were also struck in anticipation of
his planned visit to
Egypt, though a few of them, the ones we find today, were also spent before
his arrival. After Commodus' assassination and damnation, the coins were unusable, so the
mint decided, or was instructed, to melt them down and restrike them as
denarii (rather than tetradrachms) of the next emperor,
Pertinax.
That saved having to debase the metal down to the
standard of tetradrachms, and I assume
Pertinax could find ways to spend
denarii in the East, even without an imperial visit! The
denarii could of course be spent in
Syria or
Asia Minor too, whereas Alexandrian tetradrachms were only current in
Egypt itself, and perhaps the administration would have
had no need of so many new tetradrachms, if the entire "visit" issue of
Commodus denarii had been restruck as that
denomination.
