Nick,
Thanks for the compliment! I'm glad you enjoyed reading my argument, and found it convincing.
Numismatists and ancient coin collectors might be interested to consider: how much did my study of the coinage of the time contribute to this historical discovery?
Quite a
bit, actually! The chief fact I found that contradicts the traditional chronology was that
Caracalla was proclaimed
Caesar in late Nov. or
Dec. 195, at a time when according to the old chronology Septimius was
still campaigning in
Mesopotamia, several months of marching time away from
Viminacium, where Caracalla's proclamation took place according to the
vita Severi. If we believe the
vita and accordingly place Septimius in
Viminacium in late Nov.-early
Dec. 195, then clearly
Byzantium must have fallen and Septimius must have left
Mesopotamia in summer 195, not in summer 196 as the old chronology
had wrongly concluded by misinterpreting Dio's stated "full three-year duration" of the siege of
Byzantium.
This dating of Caracalla's elevation to late 195 was indeed already strongly suggested by previous evidence, namely Wilcken's restoration of the papyrus from Arsinoe commemorating the
anniversary of Caracalla's Caesarship in Nov.-Dec. 215 AD, published in 1885, together with the Alexandrian
tetradrachm naming
Caracalla Caesar before 28 August 195, published in 1901, and Dio's account of the protest against the new civil war that he witnessed at the last
circus games before the Saturnalia, so around the middle of
Dec., in a year that he does not specify. But since the papyrus from Arsinoe
had many gaps, scholars felt justified to disregard Wilcken's very persuasive restoration of its text, despite the strong support that it obviously received from Dio's account and dating of the protest in the
circus.
Numismatic evidence, however, made it clear that Wilcken's restoration of the papyrus must in fact be correct, and therefore that Septimius must have proclaimed
Caracalla Caesar in late Nov. or
Dec. 195.
1. The IMP
VII aureus of Septimius with
rev. SEVERI AVG PII
FIL, Bare-headed, draped
bust of
Caracalla r., already discussed above. This coin, a specimen of which first appeared in an illustrated
auction catalogue in 1910, was correctly interpreted as showing
Caracalla as
Caesar by
Mattingly in
RIC p. 66 and
BMC p. xcii and by
Hill (second ed.) 203, but neither of these numismatists realized that, according to the traditional chronology, Septimius must already have been IMP
VIII when he declared
Caracalla Caesar at
Viminacium, so the IMP
VII date on this
aureus poses a problem.
2. My study of the
Severan coinage of 193-198 showed that its main
type sequence was surprisingly simple: at any one time the
mint was usually striking five
denarius types and five
sestertius types in approximately the same volumes, that is three
types in each
denomination for Septimius, one
type for
Julia Domna, and one
type for Albinus
Caesar at first, then later for
Caracalla Caesar. In each
denomination, all five of the
types usually ended and were replaced by five new
types at one and the same time. In summer 195, however, Albinus' coinage at
Rome apparently ended, and
his one
reverse type on
denarii was replaced by a fourth
denarius type for Septimius, which itself only lasted until just after 10
Dec. 195, when it ended and Septimius'
denarius coinage reverted to just three
rev. types. There can be little doubt that Septimius' fourth
denarius type ended because it was being replaced by
Caracalla Caesar's earliest
type; therefore
Caracalla must have been made
Caesar, and
his Rome-mint coinage must have begun, soon after 10
Dec. 195.
Philip Hill's attempt to reconstruct the
type sequence of the
Roman imperial coinage of 193-217, published in 1964, second edition 1977, was unfortunately a fiasco, wrong in almost all assumptions and details, as I have stated numerous times on
Forvm. Regarding the matter at hand,
Hill failed to recognize that the
mint exceptionally struck a fourth
denarius type for Septimius from summer 195 until soon after 10
Dec. 195; he made Albinus' coinage end early in 195, when Septimius was proclaimed IMP V, rather than in mid-195 when Septimius was proclaimed IMP VI and then IMP
VII; and he started
Caracalla Caesar's coinage not in
Dec. 195, but only after 27 May 196, accepting a date for Caracalla's Caesarship which was wrongly conjectured by some earlier historian, I forget by whom and on what supposed evidence. It takes a wide
collection of material, particularly for the undated coinages of empresses and Caesars, and careful analysis of numerous factors to correctly reconstruct the
type sequence of any more complicated section of the
Roman imperial coinage; but
Hill relied mainly just on the material published by
type in the
standard catalogues (where some die links are pointed out, but there are no die studies), and he made many methodological mistakes, for example often ignoring the important criterion of which
types in a particular issue were probably early because they
had already been struck in the preceding issue, and which were probably late because they were to be carried on in the next issue.
3. As I have explained elsewhere on
Forvm, my examination of the imperial titles on the bronze medallions of c. 160-195 AD led me to the discovery that almost all of them must have been produced in c.
Dec. of each year, but with their titles adjusted to fit the upcoming 1 January, so that they could be used as New Year's gifts on that day. Previously some bronze medallions
had indeed been dated to New Year's Day, but it was wrongly assumed that others were regularly distributed on other occasions too, for example accessions, promotions in rank, triumphs, largesses, marriages, consecrations, the undertaking or payment of vows, and so on. This discovery about the single issue date and occasion of virtually all Roman bronze medallions provided the final numismatic confirmation that
Caracalla was made
Caesar in late Nov. or
Dec. 195, because in the course of 196 Septimius suspended the issue of New Year's medallions and of the ordinary
asses which regularly accompanied the medallions, but Caracalla's first
type as
Caesar was comparatively common on bronze medallions and on
asses, so these pieces must have been struck for distribution on 1 January 196, as part of Septimius' last larger issue of New Year's medallions and
asses, proving that
Caracalla was certainly
Caesar by the end of
Dec. 195.