Crawford 412/1, ROMAN REPUBLIC, L. Roscius Fabatus, AR Serrate Denarius

Rome. The Republic.
L. Roscius Fabatus, 59 BCE.
AR Serrate Denarius (3.95g; 19mm).
Rome Mint.

Obverse: Head of Juno Sospita, wearing goat skin headdress tied at neck, facing right; L•ROSCI, below; control symbol (two-handled cup or bowl) behind.

Reverse: Female figure feeding serpent from fold of cloak; control symbol (pileus/cap?) behind; FABATI in exergue.

References: Crawford 412/1 (Symbols 199?); Sydenham 915; BMCRR 3394 -3510; Roscia 2.

Provenance: Ex John Barton Collection; Aes Rude Chiasso 4 (6 Apr 1979), Lot 240.

Crawford dated the issue to 64 BCE, but Hersh and Walker brought that date down to 59 BCE based on their analysis of the Mesagne hoard. Harlan picks a median date of 62 BCE based on some prosopographic assumptions.

The moneyer would go on to serve as lieutenant for Caesar in Gaul in 54 BCE. In 49 BCE, he was elected praetor and intermediated between Pompey and Caesar. He was killed at Mutina in 43 BCE.

Juno Sospita was a deity who’s temple was in Lanuvium, a Latin town 32 kilometers southeast of Rome, and it’s likely that both Roscius and L. Papius, whose 79 BCE coinage is a model for Roscius’ issue, came from that town. The reverse depicts an annual rite of the Juno Sospita cult in which a girl is sent into the grotto beneath the temple to feed the sacred snake. Only chaste girls could survive the ordeal.

Like Papius’s coins, these denarii are struck on serrated flans – the last of the Roman Republic to be produced with this fabric. Like Papius’s coins, Roscius’ denarii have obverse and reverse control symbols that are paired, with no pair of symbols appearing on more than one pair of dies. On both Roscius’ and Papius’s coins, the paired control symbols have some loose relationship to one another. Roscius re-used many of Papius’s symbol pairs, but reversed their locations on the coins.

The symbol pair on my coin is very rare. As of 10/1/18, there are no matching examples on Acsearch, Coinarchives or CNG’s website database. The pair is unlisted in Babelon, Sydenham, BMCRR and Banti. It resembles symbol pair 199 in Crawford, although some differences are evident. In his manuscript on Roman Republican series marks, Charles Hersh includes a hand drawn entry AI within the section of previously unpublished Roscia symbol pairs that is a precise match for the symbols on this coin. He cites the Vienna Museum (38465) and Vatican Museum (5158) for that entry.