Tacitus , New letter in lower centre

[nureldeen]

in RIC there is no "S" letter with the letters"xi" , does this make this coin an r5 , or it was not classified by mistake?

[PeterD]

This coin would appear to be RIC Antioch 211. It has been shown that these coins with the XI mark contain roughly one part silver to ten of base metal, as compared with the XII mark containing one part silver to twenty of base metal. The XI marked coins therefore are believed to be double antoniniani.

The entry for RIC 211 are a bit confusing, but the allowed officina letters are A to H. The letter S should be officina 6. A footnote at the bottom of the appropriate page of RIC says "The operation of the sixth Officina has not been verified, but may be presumed". Note that this volume of RIC is very out of date.

[helvetica]

The emperor is radiate, draped and cuirassed on the reverse which would make this an additional var (cuirasse visible at the shoulder), and on the reverse he is holding an eagle-tipped sceptre (RIC lists a simple sceptre)

Estiot 2438, La Venera 1686 list these characteristic but with XXI in the exergue whereas this is clearly XI.
So it is a RIC Antioch 211 var.

[Emanuele Giulianelli]

wonderful coin!!!

[curtislclay]

For Aurelian to Florian, RIC has been totally superseded by Estiot's catalogue of the Paris collection and by Göbl's monograph on the coinage of Aurelian.

Your coin, in Estiot: Paris 1833-7, pl. 63, has five specimens, from officinae B, gamma (3 coins), and E.

On pp. 436-7 Estiot lists the entire production of the Antioch mint for Tacitus, including coins in other collections than Paris. She reports that your exact coin, from officina S=6, is in Vienna (1 spec.) and BM (2 spec.).

RIC 211 reports your coin correctly, apart from the two small differences noted by Helvetica: dr. cuir. not draped only on the obv., and on rev. emperor holds eagle-tipped not plain scepter.

However, the coins RIC meant were actually exactly like yours, so it's not a new variety, but a known one that RIC misdescribes. So the correct RIC notation would be RIC 211 corr., not RIC 211 var.

The RIC footnote that PeterD mentions doesn't apply to RIC 211 as he thought, but instead to RIC 206 of Cyzicus, so is irrelevant to your coin.

Because of their double silver content that PeterD points out, Estiot calls these coins "double aureliani", "aurelianus" being her term for the antoninianus after the coinage reform of Aurelian.