0962 Hadrian Denarius Roma 128-29 AD Liberalitas

Reference.
RIC II, 364; RIC 962; Strack 201

Bust A1

Obv. HADRIANVS AVGVSTVS P P
Laureate head

Rev. LIBERALITAS AVG in ex COS III
Liberalitas, standing left, emptying cornucopia held in both hands.

3.16 gr
18 mm
6h

Note from Curtis Clay.
This denarius is rare with Liberalitas standing left rather than right as usual.

Cohen 916 cites this variant from a private collection, Elberling, that was published in 1864. That identical Elberling coin, as one can tell from the accurate line drawing, then came to the BM, BMC 524, pl. 57.8, as part of the Blacas collection in 1867. Your specimen is from the same pair of dies as this BM specimen ex Blacas and Elberling. Strack 201 knew only two specimens of this coin, the BM one and another in Vienna. This variant was missing from the Reka Devnia hoard, compared to seven specimens with Liberalitas standing right. I have a specimen with Liberalitas left myself, from different dies than yours and the BM's.

The old RIC of 1926, pp. 316-7, champions a quite impossible date for Hadrian's HADRIANVS AVGVSTVS P P issue: Mattingly didn't think it fit in 128-9 AD, so proposed that it was a posthumous issue of 138-9, struck by Antoninus Pius as propaganda while he was quarreling with the Senate over Hadrian's deification! Strack objected strongly and correctly in his Hadrian monograph of 1933, and in BMC III of 1936 Mattingly had no choice but to relent and abandon his "posthumous" attribution. This issue is beyond question simply Hadrian's earliest issue with the title Pater Patriae, struck between Hadrian's acceptance of that title in 128 and c. 129 AD.