I don't know why not on your coin, Pete, one can only speculate...
In any event from what I've seen this "bald spot" depiction seems to be limited to the
first coins after Licinius became
Augustus (after crisis meering at
Carnuntum) c.308. These issue marks were relatively long lived, so
RIC dates this initial issue at
Thessalonica to 308-310.
I havn't done a comprehensive
search, but from what I've seen this depiction is limited to
Thessalonica and
Siscia which were the only two mints controlled by Licinius at that early date. Licinius only took control of
Heraclea (your coin) after Galerius's death a few years later, and
Galerius himself doesn't seem to have used that unflattering
portrait for Licinius!
This bald spot depiction is a
bit unexpected, especially at a time when imperial coin
portraits were tending to lose individuality (although this point is a
bit overstated). It seems a
bit of a rookie mistake by Licinius to propagate an unflattering
portrait (
bust?) of himself, and either he or someone at the
mint soon decided to change it!
More questions than answers, really ... he can't have been the only emperor to suffer from male-pattern baldness ... was he really the first to propagate an honest representation of himself for the mints to copy, or perhaps he was unpopular and some (or all, initially?) celators decided to copy what they would normally have routinely "fixed"?
Ben
