Septimius Severus Denarius - Emesa or Laodicea Mint, or irregular?

[Rupert]

I'd like to show you an interesting denarius here:

Septimius Severus, 193-194 AD
Obv. L SEPT SEV - PERT AUG IMP II
Laureate head right
Rev. SAECULI FELCI(T?) - I or rather a dot after SAECUL?
Seven stars and six or seven dots above and in crescent
19 mm max. diameter, 2.48 g, die axis 6 o'clock

What puzzles me is the fact that RIC lists these crescent reverses only for Emesa, and IMP II obverses for Rome and Laodicea (of which Rome can, of course, be ruled out by style). Mis-spellings on early Eastern denarii are not uncommon, and although the weight is on the light side, the coin does not show - to me - any signs of being inofficial.

Now where do i correctly attribute this coin? A competitor from this board apparently regarded it as inofficial, or I would never have got it on my half-hearted bid...

Rupert

[quadrans]

 Hi Rupert You can compare my SAECVL FELICIT example

Regards
 Q.
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-90713

[Rupert]

The reverse comes very close to my coin in terms of style and lettering (and the weight is virtually identical!), BUT your coin has the normal (and clearly Emesan) obv. legend starting with IMP and having COS II at the end. The obv. legend of my coin is, however, not attested for Emesa. That's the puzzle.

Rupert

[quadrans]

Well you right it is interesting...

Best regards

 Q.

[maridvnvm]

Certainly official IMP II.

I have a different one:-



don't you just hate it when snipes fail?

Glad it went to a good home.....instead of mine.....

the underbidder

[maridvnvm]

I have a few coins from this obverse die. Here is one for comparison.

L SEPT SEV P-ERET AVG IMP II.

Regards,
Martin

[Rupert]

Ah, very interesting. So the obv. legend on my coin too would read PERET not PERT and, since both IMP II and all these PERET and PERTE variants are typical for Emesa, my coin would be Emesan, with this rev. type just unrecorded by the time RIC was published?

As for your question in your first post: Ooh yes, absolutely! Luckily, my sniper has so far proven very reliable, only once about three weeks ago it failed to bid in time. I saw that you were bidding and thought, oh well, if he really wants it, I have no chance anyway, but I'll have a try, in case he just made a "routine bid". I was rather surprised to get the coin then!

Rupert

[maridvnvm]

IMP II is what RIC refers to as Laodicea-ad-Mare but we don't really know. COS II would be Emesa.

[dougsmit]

Can any of you point to a die of this reverse type used with a COS II obverse where the stars (planets???) are joined by so many small dots?  It may be time to readdress the old theory that there are two Syrian mints separated by whether they used IMP or COS dating but I am not convinced as to the number (one, two, three, more???). 

[Rupert]

Here's another denarius I got these days, mixing "Emesan" dating on the obverse and a "Laodicean" reverse.

Septimius Severus, denarius
Obv. IMP CA L SEP SE - V PER AUG COS II
Laureate head right
Rev. IOVI - VICT
Jupiter with Victory and scepter seated left
18 mm, 3.25 g, die axis 12 o'clock
RIC -

See RIC 454 for the same rev., obv. with IMP II obv. legend from Laodicea, while this very obv. legend, with CA for CAE, is quoted by RIC 404(a), 405B, and 406(b) for varying Mars Victor reverses from Emesa. Now where should we suppose my coin was struck?

Rupert

[curtislclay]

Rupert,

The obv. legend takes precedence: since this one ends COS II, it belongs to the COS II series.

Many rev. types are shared between COS II and IMP II coins. So here is another.

I already knew a couple of similar denarii, including one from the same dies as yours, in an unillustrated group lot of CNG's sale of the Marc Melcher collection.

The COS II legends like yours with some omitted letters are odd. The style of such coins is very like that of IMP II coins. So they are an interesting piece in the puzzle of the chronological and geographical relationship of the COS II and IMP II series.

As I stated in my long discussion of these Eastern series several years ago on Forvm, Mattingly's mint names for these series cannot be maintained.

COS II must be not Emesa, but the direct continuation of Niger's coinage, so either Antioch, or, more likely, the Antioch mint moved to Laodicea as part of Septimius' punishment of Antioch for its adherence to Niger.

When and where the IMP II series was struck remains entirely unknown. As stated above, the question is how it relates to the COS II series. The title IMP II is enigmatic, because it seems certain that these coins were not struck at the end of 193, when Septimius actually bore that title, but rather about a year later, when he was IMP V!