Cohen first described the Chedeau and de Sarcus coin in the supplement volume 7 of
his first edition, 1868,
Domitian 74; the source is a publication by those two authors describing coins found in the bed of the Mayenne River in 1864, Mémoire sur les découvertes archéologiques faites en 1864 dans le lit de la Mayenne, cited on p. XIX of Cohen's volume.
It would be
good to check this
work by C. and de S. to confirm Cohen's description of the coin; maybe they also say what happened to the coins, for example whether they were acquired by a local museum so could perhaps
still be checked there today.
In
his supplement volume
Cohen merely gives the date of this As as
COS XII CENS POT P P, without pointing out the anomalous
POT not
PER, and he prices the coin as "C"; but in the second edition of
his volume 1, 1880,
Domitian 420, he adds a
(sic),
COS XII CENS POT (sic) P P, and he deletes the "C", leaving the coin unpriced. Apparently he
had doubts about the correctness of that reading, as though it might have been misread from
COS XI
CENS POT, or maybe the coin was an ancient imitation with botched
legend.
In the light of Alberto's new coin, perhaps the Mayenne coin too really read
COS XII CENS PER P P, and
POT was just a slip of the pen. To find out, we should recheck Chedeau and de Sarcus' publication, and ideally also the coin itself, if it was acquired by a local museum!
