Septimius Severus Avg Imp VIII

Thank you for the links to your collection at Forum. That is a great resource for study. And thank you as well for taking the time to put this lesson together for us. It has been most stimulating for me. I missed on coin 4, which was a tossup for me. I went with "not Rome" because of the obverse break pattern (which really is more "Eastern" than for Rome in this series), combined with an "old Style" treatment of the beard, and the supposition that it was derived from an aureus which pointed me toward the aureus just following BMCRE Eastern mints (Wars)450 (which ironically has this reverse type but with a different inscription). It was in the ballpark, but foul.

Martin has identified coin 4 as a variant of BMCRE W146 from Rome. I think that #149 is a tad closer because it has the same reverse break pattern as Martin's coin. What is fascinating to me is that the next coin listed in BMCRE after #149 is an aureus with a draped and laureate left facing bust, and the victory reverse but with Victory advancing to the right. Call me crazy, but I still think the denarii with draped busts are derived from aurei. The BMCRE footnotes on #146 point in the same direction, with their references to Cohen 419 and the associated C.418.