Help attribute this Roman AE2, please.

lordmarcovan · May 4, 2011 1:00PM

This late-Roman bronze AE2 (23.5 mm, 6.2 g) looks Fourth century to me.

But which emperor is it? I can't quite make out the obverse legend.

The reverse is clearly GLORIA ROMANORVM, with the emperor standing with a globe in his left hand and something else (a military standard?) in his right.

Searching the Wildwinds database for this reverse design, I seem to get the most hits under Arcadius (383-408 AD). And the coins shown look very close to this one in appearance.

I know there are lots of variants on these coins, though, and Arcadius was not the only one to have used this reverse design. I'm pretty sure some of the Constantinian-dynasty emperors did, too.

There is a mintmark in the exergue there, and it starts with the familiar "SM" (Sacra Moneta) prefix, but I can't make out the rest of it.

So... is this an Arcadius AE2? I can almost think I see his name in those faint obverse legends... but not quite.

I would really, really like to pin this one down.

Why all the fuss over a common coin that's probably worth less than ten bucks, you ask?

Well, this particular coin is very significant to me personally. And perhaps to more folks than just me.

In fact, it's going to end up in a museum soon, and it might make the papers. More on that later.

Here are larger (1200 dpi) scans:

Brightened, as above, but bigger

Unbrightened/color unadjusted

lordmarcovan · May 4, 2011 2:15PM

Yep, you might have guessed it.

I just FOUND this coin.

(No, I don't mean I found the attribution- I still need your help with that. I mean I found the COIN itself. In the DIRT.)

And the really crazy thing is, I didn't even need to go across the pond or even use my metal detector.

Sapyx · May 4, 2011 7:05PM

I think your ID is as good as any other option I can think of. This example on Wildwinds is from Kyzicus mint; the mintmark begins with SM, and only a few mints - Cyzicus (K), Heraclea (H) and Nicomedia (N) - used that prefix during this reign.

But it certainly wouldn't have been lost by an ancient Roman visitor to America. When ancient Roman bronze coins come up out of the ground after 2000 years, they're generally in much worse condition than this - they look like rocks, and need lots of cleaning just to get them to this stage where you can read anything at all. This coin has already been cleaned - and LordM says he wasn't responsible for the cleaning.

Two options come to mind:

1. The "coin collector" hypothesis comes to mind. A coin collector is certainly the most likely person to own an ancient Roman coin. A variant on this hypothesis is the "coin collector's family" hypothesis, where someone tossed out, threw away or "put back where they came from" their deceased loved one's collection. If the coin was just sitting on the surface, near a road, this hypothesis seems quite likely to me.

2. As mentioned in the other thread, it might have been in circulation in relatively recent times. In the late 1700s, bronze coinage was generally scarce world-wide, especially in Britain. When ancient bronze coins were dug up in Europe during this period, people more often than not simply spiffed them up a bit and spent them, rather than treated them as ancient artefacts. If so, it may have come over to America with the rest of the coins in circulation. This hypothesis to me is supported by the wear pattern, with the ancient green patina worn off all the high points. I have a very worn penny-sized Roman sestertius in my collection that was apparently "found in circulation" in Britain and became a family heirloom, eventually finding its way here to Australia.

lordmarcovan · May 4, 2011 8:21PM

Thank you, Sapyx. I was hoping you'd be one of the ones to see this. So I guess it's pretty fair to tentatively ID it as Arcadius, then?

I hadn't stopped to consider the "lost from somebody's pocket change" implications as much as the "lost by a colonial collector" one.

Of course there's the "lost by a modern collector" angle, too, though I find that highly unlikely. Though it could well have been dropped the day before I found it, I have an intuition that this thing lay there in the dirt a long, long time. Not since Roman times, of course, but for a couple of centuries. As a digger, I've usually got a pretty decent instinct for when something's been in the dirt a long time. And the site where I found it is today a pretty sleepy little Georgia town- actually less likely to be the abode of an ancient coin collector today than it would have been back before the Civil War.

If it were lost during the earliest occupation of the site where I found it (say, 1750s or so), then I guess the "pocket change" scenario is remotely plausible. I have found a surprising variety of British, French, and Spanish coins of the colonial era here on our local sites in the past, and to somebody from the mid-18th century, this could have vaguely resembled a British farthing (albeit a rather small and fat one), a Spanish maravedis (though again, somewhat smaller than the 1658 2-maravedis piece that was previously my oldest coin find), or perhaps a French 2-sous piece or double-tournois, for example. Certainly a shortage of small change forced our earliest settlers to spend just about anything round and coinlike when they got their hands on it.

But in any scenario, the question remains as to how they would have gotten their hands on it, back in the 1700s or 1800s. Naturally nobody's claiming the Romans made it as far as Coastal Georgia. (Unless of course they rode on UFOs, haha).

I still lean mostly towards the "lost by an early collector" theory, personally.

theboz11 · May 4, 2011 9:39PM

Could flipping the coin picture to a "Negative" make the reading easier. I don't know how with my photo editor. Maybe one of the experts can do that.

lordmarcovan · May 4, 2011 9:59PM

I dunno if it will help with the details or not, but here is the image "flipped" to form a "negative" (using the "Invert Colors" command in the Paint program).

coachleonard · May 5, 2011 12:02PM

awesome find lordmacrovan! i think arcadius is an accurate--or very close to accurate--ID for this ae2. An 18th century collector is a very plausible theory. Another theory: before this colonist sailed to America, he/she was at a roman britain site where this coin turned up. He/she kept it as a souvenir, brought it to America with them (as a lucky piece?).

ormandh · May 5, 2011 12:38PM

We can only dream of how the specific coin has made its way to this continent! I, myself, also loves the sciences of sociology and archeology. How much sediment was missing in the area you found the piece? I really think that this can give you a basic idea to age. Assuming that you found it on a beach, the process of elimination could be harder to determine because of the erosion that happens anytime a storm happens. But, if you found it inland, perhaps it is the case you can determine how deep it was before the erosion started? I am interested in any pictures you can provide so we can see the actual place you found it. Looking forward to more posts! -Dan

spoon · May 5, 2011 4:44PM

Hoo boy. I can't wait to see what kind of book someone writes when you sell this one!

<< <i>421: The Year the Romans Discovered America! >>

All kidding aside, that is an awesome find - infinitely moreso being in GA!

7Jaguars · May 5, 2011 10:44PM

Perhaps those with capability could show typical AE2 obverses of the emperors of the time. One ruled out is Jovian with what is nearly always a fat neck, and not the appearance of Julian.

Could this be earlier 4th C. like Constantius II or Constans? I just do not know these well enough but thought the later "dudes" often showed more of the upper chest with heads smaller ???

Sapyx · May 6, 2011 1:16AM

It can't be an earlier type; looking up Wildwinds, the combination of GLORIA ROMANORVM reverse legend and the reverse type of Emperor standing holding a standard and globe and not dragging any captives around, occurs on only a few later emperors - specifically, Theodosius I and his two sons, Honorius and Arcadius. Theodosius can be eliminated as an option; there isn't enough space to write all the letters in his name. HONORIVS and ARCADIVS both have the same number of letters, both end in -IVS, they are brothers so their portraits are not too different from each other and both reigned at about the same time - all of which means they can't be separated on stylistic grounds. Reading the letters in the name is the only sure way to tell them apart.

Few of the obverse letters on LordM's coin are clear enough to be unambiguously read, but I believe ARCADIVS is a better match for the smudges than HONORIVS. Especially the third letter in the name, where either a C or N should go; it looks much more like a C than anything else.

WillieBoyd2 · May 6, 2011 1:17PM

I read an interesting article once, but I can not find it now.

Apparently in the 1920's and before, travelling evangelists would offer Bible classes for children,
and the prizes for answering questions would sometimes be either genuine Roman coins or copies.

worldcoinguy · May 6, 2011 2:45PM

LordM ......a man on a crusade to rewrite US history (again and again and again)...

Great find - it fascinating to think about that coin's travels.

stainless · May 7, 2011 2:38AM

Arcadius
AE 2, Cyzicus
Obv: DN ARCADI-VS PF AVG
Rev: GLORIA-ROMANORVM
SMKA in exergue
RIC IX Cyzicus 27b

Hope that's what you're looking for Rob.

stainless

Help attribute this Roman AE2, please.

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