I see coins and I have questions ... I am lucky that on
Forum, many of them get
good answers! Of course, many of these questions don't have definitive answers, but they benefit from illumination by those with many years or decades of experience.
This is an
antoninianus of
Salonina, one of an interesting small group of coins showing deities in their temples. There was also a
DEO VOLKANO, showing Vulcan, issued for Valerian, and
DEO MARTI, showing
Mars, issued for
Gallienus.
Segetia was an agricultural deity. Her temple is shown as moderately decorated, with four visible columns and an arched
pediment. There is a lot of variety in the coins, but most show knobs as
acroteria and many show three similar decorations in the
pediment.
Segetia herself has something around her
head that is sometimes described as a
nimbus. On top of that is usually a V or crescent shape, often offset to our left, described as a crescent moon.
So, my questions about this coin are: Are these descriptions correct? The crescent moon makes sense for an agricultural deity, and it could just be carelessness that sometimes omits it and often gives it a V shape and offsets it to one
side; but all these things together make me wonder.
The
nimbus, on the other hand, could be a veil, like the veil that blows out around
Providentia's
head on coins of
Diva Faustina the elder, which sometimes has stars inside it, showing her wreathed by the cosmos.
Nimbate deities are pretty
rare on coins of this period; in fact I don't know of any others, though I certainly do not pretend to
complete knowledge of the possibilities.
The thing that looks like an outer semicircle around the
head on some of these coins is actually the arch of the
pediment.
This coin
type does not seem to have been discussed often on
Forum - a
search shows only the one I posted a few years ago:
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=31963.msg205534#msg205534 .
Here is another example, and the relevant sections from three specimens showing the variations: