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Author Topic: Beautiful Julia Domna  (Read 8942 times)

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Offline Rupert

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Beautiful Julia Domna
« on: April 19, 2005, 05:56:48 pm »
Okay, I'm mostly into rarity hunting, but every now and then beauty strikes me. Today it happened again when I could not resist buying this Domna, RIC 630, attr. to Emesa. I'm looking forward to getting it in the next days. Isn't she lovely? There are quite a few very nice Julia Domna portrait denarii around at reasonable prices, I can post some of my "conquests" later in this thread.

Rupert
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Offline curtislclay

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #1 on: April 19, 2005, 11:48:47 pm »
VENER VICT is one of the commoner types, but ALL Eastern denarii of Domna in old style are rare, so you've got a scarce coin as well as a nice one!
Julia's sestertii too, of course, are all rare.
Curtis Clay

Offline Rupert

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #2 on: April 20, 2005, 05:09:02 pm »
An impressive sestertius, really! Is that mattress she's wearing all her own hair ????

An interesting thing about the Julia Domna coins is the great variety of the portrait itself, not only the hairdo. You often wouldn't think that two coins show the same lady. It isn't hard to understand in my first picture because the coins are from two different mints (Alexandria, RIC 612, and Emesa or Laodicea, RIC 614), but on the second picture you see two coins both of Rome and from the same period! The right one is, of course, much rarer, but the engraver of the left portrait sure had a better day than the colleague who worked on the rare VESTA MATER coin!

Rupert
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Offline curtislclay

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #3 on: April 20, 2005, 05:18:31 pm »
Interesting, but I have to object that the two Rome-mint pieces are NOT from the same period.
The HILARITAS denarius was struck in 196, the VESTA MATER coin in 207!
This according to my own researches.  Hill 310 has the HILARITAS type wrongly in 198, Hill 888 has VESTA MATER correctly in 207.
Curtis Clay

Offline Rupert

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #4 on: April 20, 2005, 05:23:40 pm »
All right Curtis, I only have RIC which puts them all in one big group "196-211", and of course you're lightyears ahead of me in this field. I can live with that :).

Rupert
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Offline Robert_Brenchley

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #5 on: April 20, 2005, 05:40:13 pm »
Good point about the hair. these very elaborate braided hairstyles are popular with West African women; I've known ladies spend two complete days having their hair styled! Normally, hair is woven in, with their own buried underneath somewhere.
Robert Brenchley

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Offline slokind

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #6 on: April 20, 2005, 11:03:30 pm »
Julia while she's DO MNA (and the earlier AVGVSTAs) and Crispina and other ladies dated by them to the 190s, especially to the first half or two thirds of that decade, all over the Empire, wore the same kind of hairdo.  A masterpiece from the Tomb of the Licinii, though the lady's name is unknown, illustrates it beautifully.  Quite unlike Julia's later draped hearthrug wig!  I have a friend here and now whose hair permits her to do it this way (and she does).
See the attached:
Copenhagen, NCG  Poulsen no. 158, cat. no. 717.  Like the equally fine man, Ro02548, she comes from the vault of the Licinians in Rome and ought, therefore, to belong to the same family, but her portrait is a head from a statue, and his is a bust.  They are, however, equally fine and of the same date, the last decade of the 2nd century; in her case, this is proven by the earliest coins of Julia Domna on dated coins like the bronze sestertius and as and one of the denarii illustrated in this Portfolio catalogue.  See also the related heads in Thessaloniki and Verroia.

Offline dougsmit

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #7 on: April 23, 2005, 08:49:55 pm »
While I might agree with Curtis' objection to selecting coins of different periods, I have always been impressed with the variety of portraits available for Julia Domna from closer to the same time.  I have a lot of Domna pictures on my pages and offer the following links to those interested in seeing a few dozen:
http://dougsmith.ancients.info/style.html  20 assorted Domnas
http://dougsmith.ancients.info/jdemes.html  14 more 'Emesa'

If you look at others of my pages, there are several others but the point is that Domna was portrayed as a great beauty and a rather homely woman in a pattern that can not be explained away by age.  My style page (first above) asked readers to select their favorites but expressed the opinion that beauty is in the eye of the beholder so some will not see it the same way I did.   Another subject might be asking how many of you collect coins for their style within the issue or how many would rather have a EF from bad dies than a worn F from the best dies of the series.  There is a dealer out there who once advised against buying any coins of Septimius' Eastern mints because they all had strange style.  He did not go so far as to offer these 'defective' coins at a discount but at least he was aware they were different. 


Offline Heliodromus

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #8 on: April 24, 2005, 12:33:41 am »
Here's a portrait of Julia that may be fairly true ... a youngish woman, but no beauty for sure!

I'm no expert on Severans, but per Doug's pages have tentatively attributed it to Rome 196-211 (earlier rather than later). I bought it for the reverse rather than the portrait.

I've seen other Rome Julia's attributed to more specific dates such as 203 for this reverse, and wonder where such dates are derived?

Ben


Offline maridvnvm

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #9 on: April 24, 2005, 10:04:11 am »
I must admit that I have a liking for the portraits if Domna, particularly liking the Laodicea ones. The diversity of images are quite amazing though even if they are different mints and covering from A.D. 195 to A.D. 216.

These four are Emesa A.D. 195, (another VENER VICT), Laodicea A.D. 198-202
and two Rome A.D. 208 and a much older looking A.D. 216

Offline maridvnvm

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #10 on: April 24, 2005, 10:05:57 am »
But the favourite bust that I have of her comes from Pisidia, Antioch.

Martin

Offline Rupert

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #11 on: April 24, 2005, 03:53:04 pm »
 :o Good gracious! Is that Isaura in Cilicia? I never knew (nor would have believed) they had such die-cutters there!

Rupert
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Offline Akropolis

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #12 on: April 24, 2005, 04:27:20 pm »
Yep. I goofed and forgot to provide the particulars:

Isaura, Cilicia; Æ 29. Obv: A charming portrait of Julia Domna. Rev: Athena holding thunderbolt and spear, with aegis draped over her left arm. This is a nice depiction of the aegis, a leathery object, said to be a protective shield, made of a goat-skin and imbued with special powers. SNG Paris 492 (same dies).

Offline slokind

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #13 on: April 24, 2005, 04:48:19 pm »
Now I can't resist offering my own favorite, one of the first six coins I ever acquired.  I have a reduced scan on hand of her face, and here it is.
RIC p. 209, no. 859 (I THINK; the coin is not in the house right now, and when I got it I had no RIC and no scales and was as clueless as could be, but I think it's the sestertius rather than the dupondius).
Pat Lawrence
P.S.  The reverse IS the Cybele enthroned to l., flanked by her lions.  P.L.

Offline Rupert

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #14 on: April 24, 2005, 05:21:43 pm »
Really beautiful! Now if I have learnt it correctly, this coin must be quite close to 196 AD, because the style still has great resemblance to the IULA DOMNA AUG coins.

Rupert
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Offline slokind

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #15 on: April 24, 2005, 07:04:27 pm »
Aware that certainty is impossible, I would call attention also to the justly famous New Caesar sestertius of Caracalla, also AD 196 (British Museum specimen in Kent & Hirmer; another, just a bit worn, on Doug Smith's site), which has letter forms and relation to the flan and feeling for the face that this one resembles, even if it isn't quite so great a die as the child's head.  Mine was offered in a list on some auction venue, no longer existing, not their own by H J Berk (incomplete legend?  not perfectly centered? reverse rather worn?).  If I recall correctly, and I think I do, it was dated c 195 (but I have no reason to assume that Curtis Clay wrote that copy).  Anyway, those letter forms occur as early as late Ant Pius.  Pat Lawrence

Offline HT

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #16 on: April 26, 2005, 09:28:24 am »
Sorry, I'm late.

Offline curtislclay

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #17 on: April 26, 2005, 11:12:13 pm »
The legend IVLIA DOMNA AVG was replaced by IVLIA AVGVSTA on Rome-mint coins not in 196 as RIC and BMC guess, but in mid-194, about the time Septimius became IMP IIII for his final defeat of Pescennius Niger in the battle of Issus.
The MATER DEVM type of Pat's sestertius was struck either late in 194 or early in 195.  The New Year's asses of 1 Jan. 195, which will have been prepared in late Nov.-Dec. 194, certainly used this type.  The Berk dating of this type to 195 that Pat recalls was certainly mine.  So Rupert is correct that this type falls early in the IVLIA AVGVSTA issue, soon after the end of IVLIA DOMNA AVG.
Curtis Clay

Offline dougsmit

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #18 on: April 27, 2005, 06:24:21 am »
The legend IVLIA DOMNA AVG was replaced by IVLIA AVGVSTA on Rome-mint coins not in 196 as RIC and BMC guess, but in mid-194, about the time Septimius became IMP IIII for his final defeat of Pescennius Niger in the battle of Issus.

Compressing the Domna issues into the pre-IMP IIII period really makes Julia an important player in terms of the number of coins struck.  In a little over a year, at Rome, there were massive numbers of the common Venus (from back) and Vesta types along with the scarcer Fecunditas coins.  Septimius had a great number of types during this same period if we count each Legion separately and quite a few if we lump them all together.  Based on surviving coins, how does this alignment change the overall percentage of issue for Julia compared to Septimius/Albinus?  How does that compare to other women (e.g. Faustinas).

This certainly makes the parallel issues from Alexandria with relatively large numbers of the second legend Venus (front) fit a lot better with the proposed early closing date for that mint.


Offline curtislclay

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #19 on: April 27, 2005, 09:57:31 pm »
      Yes, one had to wonder how Severus' mint at Alexandria, which to all appearances closed its doors in Summer 195, could have copied the Roman denarius IVLIA AVGVSTA / VENVS FELIX, when according to Mattingly IVLIA AVGVSTA was only introduced at Rome in 196, and according to Hill no. 379 the VENVS FELIX type at Rome belongs to 199!
      Part of the problem was doubtless that this VENVS FELIX Alexandrian denarius of Domna, though her commonest type at the mint by far, had not generally been recognized and is not in RIC or BMC, so was apparently unknown to Mattingly and Hill!
       On my chronology of Domna's Rome-mint coinage, in contrast, IVLIA AVGVSTA appears in mid-194, and VENVS FELIX shares a middle-bronze obv. die with MATER DEVM, which is the New Year's type of 1 Jan. 195 so was undoubtedly in use in Dec. 194. 
      The Rome-mint VENVS FELIX denarii will have been struck alongside Septimius' APOLLINI AVGVSTO, TR P III Mars advancing, and TR P III Palladium early in 195, three types which were also copied at Alexandria shortly before it closed.
       Hill claimed to be re-establishing the exact order of production of the mint of Rome under Septimius and Caracalla, right down to the order in which the various denominations of a particular type were allegedly produced by the mint.  Yet a rev. type of Domna of early 195 appears in his book attributed to 199, four years too late!  The book, which looks at first glance so scientific and authoritative, is teeming with errors of this sort.
Curtis Clay

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #20 on: April 28, 2005, 08:38:12 am »
    This is such an interesting and outstanding thread.  I have spent the last several hours following leads and trying to digest as best I can what has been shared here (although I was disappointed to see Curtis' comment on the Hill text on the Severans since I just bought it!).
    Because no-one has posted her denarius with the Felicitas reverse, I'll do so here and add a question.  While the IVLIA AVGVSTA begins in mid 194, how long did it continue?  The coin I post here would seem to show an older woman.  Septimus died in 211 which would place her at about 40 years.  I am assuming this is the Rome mint, but did they continue to produce the series into this time frame?
Thanks and best regards, Bob

Offline curtislclay

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #21 on: April 28, 2005, 09:47:37 am »
      IVLIA AVGVSTA lasted until Septimius' death in early 211, when Julia was voted new titles and appears on the coins as IVLIA PIA FELIX AVG (her obv. legend from now on) / MAT AVGG MAT SEN MAT PATR (Mother of the Augusti, Mother of the Senate, Mother of her Country).
       Your FELICITAS type was struck around 206 and yes, at the mint of Rome.  The new-style Eastern mint closed when the imperial family returned from the East to Rome in 202.
     
Curtis Clay

Offline aragon6

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #22 on: August 20, 2005, 07:54:41 am »
A really nice natural portrait.....well worth keeping just for that. ;D

Offline Jochen

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #23 on: August 20, 2005, 10:04:19 am »
Beautiful colors!

Offline PLINIUS

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #24 on: August 21, 2005, 12:01:42 pm »
this is my Julia
Isn't she lovely? I think that she was really a beautiful woman.



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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #25 on: August 21, 2005, 12:29:39 pm »

Offline Adrianus

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #26 on: September 02, 2005, 07:49:08 am »

Offline curtislclay

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #27 on: September 02, 2005, 09:52:48 am »
Curtis Clay

Offline Adrianus

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Re: Beautiful Julia Domna
« Reply #28 on: September 02, 2005, 10:01:06 am »

 

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