Maridvnvm -- That's a great exemplar of
Roman "
captives coinage"!
We may have discussed it in other threads, but one of my main collecting interests is "barbarians" and "
captives" as depicted on
RIC.
This coin touches on a really interesting topic: The details of how the
Romans restrained their prisoners/slaves.
I've looked at 1,000s of examples, and your coin provides one of the clearest illustrations (twice!) I've seen of this specific method of restraint. Not all of dies and
types show this particular arrangement, but when they do, it's very standardized:
Collar (bronze?) around the neck, a pair of cords (probably rope, maybe leather or chain?) are attached to the collar and run across the torso (possibly 2 diagonal + 2 vertical), attaching to a waist harness (maybe leather?). The captive's arms are bound in back, presumably also tied to the harness.
It's hard to be sure exactly what's going on; the clothing on the Soldier/Emperor (or
Victory) can sometimes show similar features. Distinguishing them is the challenge.
Zooming in:
Also: Could those be knots or manacles around the elbows (or just bunched up
fabric)?
The same kind of harness/collar arrangement can often be seen on the
Victory dragging captive AE4s of
Theodosius [
LINK]
et al. -- especially the ones from this same
mint,
Cyzicus:
Different mints and examples may show the restraints differently. It's not clear whether the
Parthian captives on my
Antioch FTR
[LINK] are less elaborate:
The specific set-up varies, but based on figurines and depictions in other media, it's clear that they were realistically portraying the treatment of prisoners.
Here's a different arrangement illustrated on a
Roman bronze figurine (there are many variants). Unlike the ones shown above, it's clear that the captive can't walk when bound the way shown below, so it must've been used in some other specific context:
https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/413449 You can often see details of the harnesses and bindings on
Denarii and
Antoniniani, but in most cases all you can see is that the arms are held together somehow, usually behind the back. When the details are visible, like on your coin, it's something special!
(My Barbarians-Captives-Enemies [BCE] page, using examples from my "BCE Collection" from Republican through Byzantine: [LINK].)
