The Coinage of Carausius and his Colleagues

In this months edition of Spink's Numismatic Circular is an article of particular interest to Carausius students and collectors, but will probably also be of interest to readers of this blog. This article by R J Bourne covers the issues that name the legitimate emperors, Diocletian and Maximianus as colleagues of Carausius and were minted in Britain by Carausius. A useful update to the very out of date RIC V and thoroughly recommended. It contains a new list of known examples with a large number of illustrations. However, even since publication, some new types have emerged and the author is already preparing a addenda to this listing.

A Jugate Bust from London

Jugate busts from London are not common. I recently came across this example of Severus II in an auction catalogue and I thought I would share it with you. The Trau collection was sold at auction in Vienna in 1935 and contained a number of Roman rarities. This coin, lot number 3695 was estimated at 80 Austrian schillings and sold for 135. As you can see from the catalogue entry, it was not exactly highlighted, which might be indicative of the rest of the sale rather than the quality of this coin. The RIC entry for this type (RIC VI London 75) gives the reference specimen as in the Vienna collection, which might be a coincidence or it could be that the coin was bought for the collection from this sale. RIC records it as R3, notionally meaning up to ten examples had been recorded.

A Well Travelled CLARITAS!

This coin (RIC VII London 102) was minted in London, moved to France at some point in the last 1700 years and recently travelled to the USA and back! A scarce coin, only three occur in the four major hoards I have studied, and also highlights an interesting variety. One of the two examples in the Bourton on the Water hoard (#1449) is described as with spread chlamys. I have also been alerted to another spread chlamys example and this is illustrated on Lech Stepniewski's "Not in RIC" site. He suggests that it should be listed as a new type after RIC 104. At present I have simply recorded the the variant in my notes but will be giving serious consideration to listing it as a new type. It will be interesting to try and find out if the two "variants" are from the same or different dies ..............