Septimius Severus Eastern Imp VIII Denarii Classification

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jecz79 Pillar of the Community Portugal 705 Posts	Posted Yesterday 6:11 pm I have been properly classifying my romans. Now dealing with the denarii. As is often my luck I am stuck in one that I cannot find a RIC number for in wildwinds. It is a Septimius Severus and style of the letters has me convinced that it is from the eastern issues. The obverse legend has one near reference, RIC 444var. But mine is IMP VIII instead of IMP II: L SEPT SEVER PERT AVG IMP VIII The reverse has a figure holding what seems a trident. And a legend I cannot understand. CERER is clear. The rest looks like ERVGIC but I make no sense of that. The last letter may be something else. The others I am quite sure of. I found reference to an issue with a CERER FRVGIF reverse. But this one certainly has an E at the start of the second part. Is there a published list of known legends for these issues? Was this eastern mint perhaps a traveling one where mistakes on legends were common? Another possibility is an era counterfeit. The coin has a heavy black patina and brown corrosion products where is has some fractures. It might be a fourre. Have not yet got a good photograph, the patina on this one hampers it. Weight is 2,49 g. Report this Post to the Staff

jecz79 Pillar of the Community Portugal 705 Posts	Posted Yesterday 6:40 pm Answering myself. On further search the british museum has one with CERER ERVGIC also. Different die but this legend exists on denarii, good. They read ERVGIG but I think it ends with a C. https://www.britishmuseum.org/colle..._1947-1001-8 What would ERUGIG mean? Ceres may be holding a torch but if so it has three flames like a trident. Which would be odd? Report this Post to the Staff
Sap Moderator Australia 16924 Posts	Posted Yesterday 8:02 pm Quote: What would ERUGIG mean? Most of the coins of Septimus Severus depicting Ceres (or more commonly, the coins of his wife Julia Domna) have the legend more like CERER FRVG, CERER FRVGIF or CERER FRVGIFER - "Ceres the fruit-bearer". I would assume your coin has a "typo", and the die-cutter has mis-spelled FRVGIF as ERVGIG". Perhaps "ERVGIG" is some kind of mash-up between trying to carve "FRVGIF" and trying to carve "..ER FRVG". The British Museum quietly acknowledges the spelling mistake on their coin you've linked to with that small line in the reverse description: "Inscription note: sic". "Sic", in the literary usage, means "we know there's a typo there but we're just copying what it says, verbatim, not correcting it". Assuming it is an Eastern-mint issue, then it's possible the die-cutter didn't speak Latin and so didn't realise their spelling error. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis Report this Post to the Staff
jecz79 Pillar of the Community Portugal 705 Posts	Posted Today 54M ago This is an odd one. I will hope to take and publish photos during the weekend. The style of the letters in mine is different from the BM one. More rounded. More like someone used to cutting greek letters would do the engraving? So I think these two different reverse dies were done by two different people. Both have EREGIC spelled. I do not believe it was a typo. Perhaps a mistake by people unfamiliar with latin. But I also think that is unlikely. Two die cutters doing the same mistake? Report this Post to the Staff
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