Sooner than expected here is my exciting new addition:
Augusta Traiana Commodus Aemilius Iustus City-gatehttps://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-70073Although coinage for
Commodus fairly
rare at
Augusta Traiana, here is another example of the ubiquitous city
reverse.
N.B. Rx
legend blunder AΓOV instead of AVΓOV…
Even though the rx
legend is very difficult to read, I am fairly certain that this coin was issued during the tenure of Aemilius Iustus. There is another specimen that appears to share this
obverse die with Aemilius Iustus clearly as the governor. A contributing criterion to this theory is the jumbled placement of the letters of the rx
inscription. This characteristic is also present in the
CNG example.
Cf. attached
CNG Electronic
Auction 83 (18.02.2004) lot 93. Their description:
THRACE,
Augusta Traiana (Trajanopolis).
Commodus. 177-192 AD. Æ 29mm (15.31 gm). L. Aem(ilius) Justus, hegemon. Laureate and draped
bust right / River-god reclining left on upturned
urn, holding
reed; AIM IOVCTOV (magistrate).
AMNG II -;
cf. SNG Copenhagen 810 (
Lucius Verus);
BMC Thrace -;
Mionnet -. VF, green
patina, encrustation.
Stein dates the tenure of this magistrate as before 180 AD by the
praenomen initial Λ(ucius) for
Commodus, but these two examples both have M(arcus), which would indicate a date subsequent to 180 AD. Perhaps L. Aemilius Iustus was governor during the transitional period of
Marcus Aurelius’ death and the ascension of
Commodus to sole rule. The only examples Stein knew of were issued from
Hadrianopolis. In Paul M. M. Leunissen’s more recent
work,
Konsuln und Konsulare in der Zeit von Commodus bis Severus Alexander (180-235 n. Chr.) (J.C. Gieben Amsterdam 1989) no new prosopographic information has been found.
Curtis Clay outlines the evidence presented in
Römische Reichsbeamte der Provinz Thracia (1920)
p.32-33, which is highly relevant to dating my coin, (read Stein not
Strack) along with some additional coins that have come to light recently. Like
Claudius Bellicus, Aemilius Iustus is only known to modern scholars from the coinage of
Hadrianopolis.
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=38043.0 Stein tentatively places Aemilius Iustus between
Claudius Bellicus and
Titus Suellius Marcianus, but the
obverse die evidence in
Jurukova for
Hadrianopolis seems to indicate that Aemilius Iustus was subsequent to Marcianus and just prior to Iulius Castus. There is no
obverse die sharing between Aemilius Iustus and any other governor at
Hadrianopolis, but employing the subjective technique of
portrait style comparison,
Commodus looks less mature in the Marcianus dies than on the Aemilius Iustus dies and more mature on the Iulius Castus dies than the Aemilius Iustus dies. The initial M of the
praenomen on the two examples from
Augusta Traiana support the other, more
complete, evidence from
Hadrianopolis.
I included the seller's image as it reveals some additional detail of the coin not captured in my scan. As usual my scan closer to actual color and it is possible to read much more of the
legend in hand than can be seen in the images.
1. My scan
2. Seller's image
3.
CNG river-god
I am very pleased to add this first specimen, issued by this governor, to my
collection!
Comments always welcome!
JPW