Spes, of course, usually advances left, carrying a flower in her right hand and pulling up her skirt with her left hand. The
type is quite common on old-style Syrian
denarii of
Septimius Severus and
Julia Domna, where, however,
Spes is also frequently given a second flower on her
head, as I happened to notice today for the first time!
See the first coin below, which I purchased a month ago because of the unusual double break in the
obv. legend (SE - V -
PERT), the rather
rare rev. legend form
BONA SPES, and the two dots in the
rev. legend at 11 and 5 o'clock.
Today I wrote a ticket for that coin and placed it in my trays, only noticing afterward, from my printout of the dealer's picture which was
still on my desk, that
Spes has a second flower on top of her
head.
Looking for parallels, I found that this Eastern
Spes quite often has a second flower on her
head, sometimes with three petals like the flower in her hand, but sometimes with just two petals. One coin in my
collection has just a single line above Spes'
head, so we can't be sure a flower was meant; another coin has a small
modius on her
head, an attribute that is quite often given to other female divinities on these old-style Syrian
denarii of Septimius and
Julia Domna.
The second flower on Spes'
head can be observed not only in Septimius'
COS II old-style series, but in
his IMP II and
IMP VIII series; see Barry Murphy's photos below of two coins formerly in
his Severan collection, the first an
IMP II example with just two petals above Spes'
head, the second an
IMP VIII with three petals. The
Spes type does not appear to have been used by the
mint of
Alexandria, so we cannot tell whether or not the second flower would have been added there too. As far as I know a second flower was never added to the
Spes type at the
mint of
Rome, but I haven't looked very far and certainly can't exclude that I might have overlooked it on some Rome-mint coins too!