Faustina Junior Uraeus

[moonmoth]

This little coin has some lovely dark green and reddish-brown tones in its patina.  Patchy is usually ugly, but not in this case.  It's an Alexandrian obol (by Milne) or hemiobol (by Sear) of Faustina Junior, 17 x 18mm, 3.74g.  The reverse shows the Uraeus serpent with disk and horns headdress.



I can't find this in Milne.  Does anyone have a reference for it?  I would really like to know whether the regnal year LIB is for Antoninus Pius or Marcus Aurelius.

Notice that the letter A is missing from the second word of the obverse legend, ΦAYC(TINA) CЄBCTH• .

Bill

[Steve Minnoch]

http://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/coins/15420/

Pius, it would seem.

Steve

[moonmoth]

Thanks, Steve, that's the coin right enough.

[iwaniw]

Moonmoth:

Of course, the coin was issued under Pius, as Steve illustrated. There are no obols struck under Aurelius.

Faustina II (under Pius) (years 11 to 24)
Faustina II (under Aurelius) (years 2 to 10 -- bronze likely only to year 8, all year 10 coins could be partial dates for Pius). Faustina II's portrait usually a bit larger than under Pius and younger looking under Aurelius , even though she is actually older.

I have no clue where Sear gets his bronze denomination classifications from.

Iwaniw

[moonmoth]

Thanks for the details.  So you would go with Milne's version of the denominations, then?  Lighter coins having higher value.

Bill

[iwaniw]

Moonmoth

I agree with Milne's classification down to the obol size. There is still some debate about what the denomination(s) below the obol is (are).

Here's a table of the different weights. (standard deviation); [sample size]
                           weights in grams

                        Domitian               Hadrian

drachm                23.79  [32]          24.10   (2.34)   [34]

hemidrachm          12.29  [22]          13.06   (1.37)   [17]

diobol                    8.24  [100]         8.68    (1.02)   [31]

obol                       4.07  [77]           4.90   (0.51)   [72]

half-obol                 1.88  [15]           2.08   (0.36)   [29]

dichalkon                1.17   [27]           1.02   (0.15)   [9]

The weight of the Hadrian obol seems a bit high. The weights for the Hadrian "half-obol"  were taken from the Nome issues which are generally called "dichalkons"

For some denominations, when the weights are between the denominations, one has to take the coin size into account.

Iwaniw

[moonmoth]

Thanks - I'll save that table for reference!