The second earliest Caesar coin portrait

[mauseus]

Hi,

I know I've posted this coin before, it's been in my gallery a long time and in my collection even longer (I bought it as an unidentified ancient coin in 1980 as a schoolboy).

Julius Caesar
AE 22 mm
Lampsacus
Banti & Simonetti I no.204 (Parium)
RPC I 2269 (Lampsacus)
Countermarked C cornucopia P on obverse

I was just looking across the web for other examples when I came across an attribution that cited the coin as one of the earliest busts of Caesar to appear on a coin, the earliest being a Nicaea bronze (RPC I 2026) and this one is probably the second. It, apparently, predates the denarii of M. Mettius from January 44 BC. RPC dates this Lampsacus piece to "c.45 BC?".

The Nicaea coin date can be supported from the era date on the coin (ie year 236 in an era that began in 282/1 BC) but can anybody point me to research that supports the date of the Lampsacus coin please?

Regards,

Mauseus

[Andrew McCabe]

That's an amazing school boy acquisition!!! All I ever got for my pocket money were Gloria Exercitus, and if I was lucky perhaps a barbarous Tetricus. You get a lifetime Caesar portrait in VF on a rare type with a great countermark!

If not in RPC the answer is probably in Grant, From Imperium to Auctoritas, which is essentially a pre-volume of RPC that is presumed to be on every bookshelf beside the big blue volumes, just the same way Grueber BMCRR supports Crawford. I suspect Grant dates the coins to the 45 BC colony's refoundation.

[mauseus]

Hi,

Thanks for the compliment. I wish I could take the credit for knowing what I was buying but it was the countermark that attracted me to the unattributed coin  .

I consulted both RPC and Grant (FITA) before posting (I should have added). Grant attributes the coin to Parium (however "twinned" with Lampsacus) and suggests that the portrait is posthumous and RPC doesn't help on first reading either.

Regards,

Mauseus

[Carausius]

That's an amazing school boy acquisition!!! All I ever got for my pocket money were Gloria Exercitus, and if I was lucky perhaps a barbarous Tetricus. You get a lifetime Caesar portrait in VF on a rare type with a great countermark!

Ditto! Lately, I've been occasionally selling some of my schoolboy acquisitions on flea bay, and, with a few exceptions, it's fair to say most are near junk that I will need to batch and (hopefully) sell as group lots. Yours is one I would be happy to have in my collection!

[Andrew McCabe]

For completeness I checked out a few other references that are usually relevant to late-Republican provincials: Coinage in the Roman World in the Late Republic (BM conference 1987); Coinage and Money under the Roman Republic (Crawford); Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces  (Howegego etc). Nothing on these issues.

But I think I found an answer, in an odd place - my own website! It has a brief piece on these issues:
http://andrewmccabe.ancients.info/Provincial.html#Lamps
It goes into the C.G.I.L. and legends used on these issues and concludes that the end of the legend can be expanded to mean "Q. Lucretio, L. Pontio, Duovirs, first Colony founders". Thus, by implication, these issues, if struck by the first duovirs, would have been struck in the first year of the colony i.e. 45BC. I seem to have used FITA as a main source, but, regardless what FITA says elsewhere about dating, if the legends explicitly say that the issue was struck by the first Duovirs that founded the colony, then it must be 45BC.

Well done again for your amazing felicity as a sharp eyed kid!

[mauseus]

Hi Andrew,

Thank-you for your efforts. You have also managed to put this coin (AE13mm) into context from Parium as an anonymous Julius Caesar issue from 45 BC. I had ony picked up the Lindgren reference (Lindgren I 272), rather than finding it in RPC I (2259). I had tossed it into the sale tray 18 months ago, it languishes there no longer as it is in my collection now!

Regards,

Mauseus

[Andrew McCabe]

Hi Andrew,

Thank-you for your efforts. You have also managed to put this coin (AE13mm) into context from Parium as an anonymous Julius Caesar issue from 45 BC. I had ony picked up the Lindgren reference (Lindgren I 272), rather than finding it in RPC I (2259). I had tossed it into the sale tray 18 months ago, it languishes there no longer as it is in my collection now!

Regards,

Mauseus

You are getting a very bad reputation for unintentionally buying important coins of Julius Caesar, the first due to its interesting countermark (completely ignoring the Caesar portrait) and the second being idly tossed into your for-sale tray.

Perhaps you might let me sift through your discard box at some time, there might be some silver coins about 20mm diameter with a stick insect figure on one side and some bloke's head on the other with legend PERPETVO or DICT QVART or such like, that you evidently discarded because you don't collect insect types!

[mauseus]

Lol! And thank-you again.

Mauseus