Solidus Officina
Autos4Alex
Posts: 442 ✭✭✭
Does anyone know what an 'officina' is as related to a Justinian Solidus?
For example this auction indicates it's a 1st officina
Does it mean the office that created it? Or is it some sort of indication of the date?
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Officinas (offices) were mint work sections, numbered 1, 2, 3 or A, B, C, or the equivalent in other alphabets.
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forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Officina
Thanks for the info and pointer!
When a modern coin collector thinks of the word "mint", we tend to think of what a mint is like in our own day: a large, sprawling industrial complex the size of several city blocks, big enough to house the coinage production facilities for an entire medium-sized country.
In ancient times, mints weren't like that. In an era where every industry was a cottage industry, the mints were in cottages too; each cottage was an "officina" of the mint. So, in the Late Roman period, for a large city or for a city producing coinage for a large number of nearby cities in addition to itself, a large number of these officinae were required to produce all of the coinage necessary. At one stage, Antioch had fifteen of them, for example.
Although these mint-buildings were physically separate, there was still usually a great deal of centralized oversight and control in terms of coinage design. While stylistic variation between mint-cities is fairly common, stylistic variation between officinae of the same city is usually much more subtle. The officina-marks were one way that quality control of the various officinae were maintained.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded one DPOTD.
A fascinating history lesson.