I really did it now.
Bought my first
aureus, after over thirty years of collecting.
As you can imagine, I
had wanted this for ages, but what kept me from doing it was always that, for the
price of a decent
aureus, I could get a lot of more interesting coins in other metals.
Still, early this year, I started to intensify my
search again – after such a long time, a
collection needs a gold coin!
Certainly it was also my list of demands that made the
search harder. If I was to pay a real lot of
money for a gold coin, I wanted it
- not too badly worn down
- with a
good portrait- not quite one of the commonest
types- not some Late
Roman or
Byzantine solidus that look one like the other, with no real
portraits anymore
- and affordable to me without plunging my family in destitution.
That narrows the
choice! Usually, prices for
aurei start at about 1,000 Euros, which is what you pay for a real sluggish
Nero or
Vespasian with a
standard reverse.
CNG sold some really badly mistreated
aurei from
India lately, with about two to five holes each,
weight plugs driven in and so on; some of these were
cheap but didn’t really satisfy me either.
Now after all I did go one range up in
price (yes, this is my most expensive coin now) and
still made a few compromises as to condition – yes, my coin has a hole and some scratches. But this is compensated for by a coin
type that leaves nothing to be desired in terms of numismatic and historical interest. The coin was in a recent sale for which I entered just this single bid, and I was really surprised to win the coin.
GallienusHeavy
Aureus, about 264-267 AD
Obv. GALLIENAE
AUGUSTAEHead left with crown of reeds
Rev. UBIQUE
PAXVictoria with rod in
biga galloping right
Diameter 18 to 20 mm,
weight 5.85 g,
die axis 12 o‘clock
Holed, many small scratches plus one bigger scratch in right
obv. field, otherwise
very fine with beautiful reddish
toning in the fields
Cohen 1015,
RIC 74, Göbl 689b (17 spec.)
Ex Künker sale 158, lot 740
The sense and message of this coin issue is something that
wise men have been racking their
brains about for centuries. (By the way, this coin
type is
rare, but not rarer than others of
Gallienus – in fact, most other
aureus types, viewed individually, are rarer.) The emperor, easily recognizable and bearded as always, wears a crown of reeds like Arethusa (like on
http://www.acsearch.info/record.html?id=4323) or Demeter (
http://www.acsearch.info/record.html?id=14235), accompanied by a
legend naming him Empress Galliena. Hardly a
good choice for an emperor who, at least in traditional historiography, always struggles with an image of being effeminate and weak. This is backed with
Victory and a
legend of UBIQUE
PAX, together suggesting „
Victory and
Peace everywhere“, at a time when barbarians tried to invade at all frontiers,
Postumus had firmly established himself in
Gaul and several other usurpers were emerging in other parts of the empire.
No wonder scholars for a long time were inclined to believe that these were satirical coins intended to poke fun at the emperor. Yet there are two things that render this hypothesis unlikely, or, rather, impossible:
Firstly, it seems very illogical that somebody would have struck coins mocking the emperor just in gold, and in a higher
weight than normal
aurei. This "propaganda" would have reached a few thousand rich businessmen and politicians and disappeared in their purses, when the important thing would really have been to pass this message (like, „Our emperor is a sissy who lost all sense of reality!“) to the people. For this purpose, it would have been much more appropriate if they
had struck large quantities of coins like
antoniniani, just maybe two or three millimeters larger in order to attract attention.
Secondly, the
style of these coins is that of the
mint of
Rome, and derisive coins, if they existed, should much more likely be in the
style of
Cologne, where
Postumus had excellent engravers!
Today’s hypothesis is that this coin
type may refer to the cult of Demeter and the initiation of
Gallienus to the Eleusinian Mysteries – yet this event could certainly have been remembered on coins in a less ambiguous manner. To my knowledge, this mystery has by far not been solved.
Now my first
aureus features the same emperor as my very first ancient coin – another thing that makes this, I think, a
good choice as My First
Aureus!
Best regards,
Rupert
