Great coin and notes. I, too, find single-diety attributions more convincing. So many of the "with attributes of" interpretations make it seem like ancient folk must have been walking encyclopedias of myth. In modern times, we'd certainly find it odd to see an image and "oh, that's clearly Groucho Marx, but wearing Stan Laurel's hat" or perhaps "that's St
Peter, but carrying St. Catherine's wheel" may be similar. It is possible something like that was going on, but it seems less probable than a simpler explanation in many cases.
Glad you note
Harlan. I think
Harlan gets unnecessary flak for the imprecision of some of
his dating (yes, technically less historical) and not enough credit for
his creativity in
his search for a less-contrived
contemporary explanation for some of the
types. I always read Crawford's phrase X was chosen at "random" as <I don't have an answer>. Random is not a particular attribute of
Roman public officials.