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Author Topic: Honorius or Visighots siliqua ?  (Read 1051 times)

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Offline propraetoris79

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Honorius or Visighots siliqua ?
« on: September 12, 2015, 10:34:26 am »
Hi everybody !
I'm coin collector from Poland. A few days ago I bought this silver coin of Honorius and I nedd your opinion about it.
The coin was described as : " reduced siliqua of Honorius" . The weight coin is 1,17 g.
In my opinion the portrait of emperor is very unusual, and mintmark letters : ..SRV ( ? ) indicates that it can be a VIsighots siliqua under Honorius reign ? I'm right ?   

Offline Victor C

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Re: Honorius or Visighots siliqua ?
« Reply #1 on: September 12, 2015, 01:09:06 pm »
in RIC X, Kent says "Pieces of this type with the mint-mark PSRV are related to similarly marked coins of Attalus presumptively struck, like his corresponding solidus, at Narbonne, and may be attributed to the Visigoths." (pg 135)
Victor Clark

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Offline suarez

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Re: Honorius or Visighots siliqua ?
« Reply #2 on: September 15, 2015, 05:07:43 am »
The mintmark is PSRV for Ravenna. Personally I wouldn't pay too much attention to the "official vs. visigothic" categorizing. First because there's no reliable way to tell in most cases and secondly because the distinction seems forced and insubstantial. With all the speculation and conjecturing on the topic RIC X I think does more of a disservice than shed light on what is already a very abstruse subject.

It's a "real" Honorius, leave it at that :-)

Ras

Offline Victor C

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Re: Honorius or Visighots siliqua ?
« Reply #3 on: September 15, 2015, 08:59:55 am »
The mintmark is PSRV for Ravenna.

Except the mintmark for Ravenna on coins minted by Honorius is RVPS
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Offline lrbguy

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Re: Honorius or Visighots siliqua ?
« Reply #4 on: September 15, 2015, 11:13:47 am »
Can anyone get into this or do we need an RSVP?

Seriously, I am not sure what Ras is claiming here.  Style has long been used to help differentiate Roman from "barbarous" and that seems to be the approach Kent is taking here.  Is the objection that this seems prejudicial?  Does that make it insubstantial or incredible?

A blundered mintmark may not have been due to ignorance, but to an intentional point of differentiation. Visigothic pride perhaps?  Either way, it still says someone other than the minting authority at Ravenna was at work
-ellarby

Offline Victor C

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Re: Honorius or Visighots siliqua ?
« Reply #5 on: September 15, 2015, 01:18:40 pm »
Style has long been used to help differentiate Roman from "barbarous" and that seems to be the approach Kent is taking here. 

Style is talked about in differentiating official from nonofficial, but in this specific instance Kent clearly states his approach -- it is the mintmark which was not used by Honorius.
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Offline suarez

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Re: Honorius or Visighots siliqua ?
« Reply #6 on: September 15, 2015, 10:28:46 pm »
It's arbitrary to say that it wasn't. To say that it can't be and any proof to the contrary invalid on account that it has already been decided that it can't be sounds like circular reasoning. This is Kent's position, true, but he does not go into any satisfactory detail nor make any strong case that I can see why they should be considered Visigothic, and specifically from Narbonne no less.

It took me less than five minutes to come up these examples. Had we been talking about barbs from a century before there'd be no argument. In those cases it's for the most part a cut and dried distinction thanks to the consistently careful work of the official mints. Having a reliable yardstick is the reason we can point a finger at a coin with a funky legend and call it barbarous even when all other features seem appropriately in line with official mintwork. But this regularity is missing in 5th century coinage. Sure, there's the outliers from both ends of the spectrum that prove existence of skilled and rough camps, respectively, and the reasonable conclusion being that the fine ones must be government handiwork while the crude stuff must have come from freelancers. But unless I'm missing some key research that has proven otherwise I don't see how you can look at these coins and say with any degree of confidence "yeah, you see, this mintmark here absolutely could not have come from xyz" when pretty much the ENTIRETY of western Roman coinage of the 5th century exhibits at least some barbarous traits vis a vis its coinage from previous centuries. If we are to say that regularity of execution is the threshold by which we differentiate barbarous from Roman then the fact that we have at least these three, with otherwise period-correct style and fabric and whose only distinguishing mark are the reversed mintmark positions, then it's a real strain to support Kent's opinion without some additional arguments. Either that or we have to go back to the drawing board on how we make the distinctions.

Ras

Offline glebe

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Re: Honorius or Visighots siliqua ?
« Reply #7 on: September 19, 2015, 07:06:22 pm »
Below are some Arcadius coins from Gaul, dated to c. 390, not too long before the Visigoths moved in (412).
Stylistically they are fairly easily distinguishable (in my opinion) from most of the PSRV "Honorius" types from Gaul.
The latter are also easily distinguishable (stylistically) from the official Honorius types from Italy.

Ross G.

 

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