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Some Knossian Coins of Augustus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

R. H. J. Ashton
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Extract

The following rare issue of bronze coins has been ignored or misattributed by previous writers:

Obverse: bare head of Augustus r.; behind head, AVGVS; border of dots.

Reverse: within an olive wreath, or .

The details of only five specimens, from one obverse die and two reverse dies, are available to me.

The only extended discussion of this issue is in Grant, FITA 276–7, which was based solely on the Gotha coin and on a coin in the British Museum. The latter was not illustrated, but was most likely coin 2c, the Seager coin, which was an accession in 1926: 2b was an accession in 1948, two years after the publication of FITA, and nine years after the completion of its manuscript. Grant read the reverse legend of the Gotha coin as , noting that on the British Museum specimen the VE was not ligatured. But Grant's photograph of the Gotha coin, which is the only available record, yields under close examination no certain reading for the final letter of the third line: it could be D, O, or Q. There are, moreover, traces of only one letter on the fourth line, and again it is uncertain whether this is D, O, or Q (it looks in fact more like D than anything else).

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 70 , November 1975 , pp. 7 - 9
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1975

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References

1 The Director of the Staatliche Münzsammlung, Munich, kindly informed me in a letter dated I October 1974 that the Munich collections contain a sixth example (not the Gotha coin listed at I), but I have not been able to obtain further details.

2 Having examined the coin, I think Mrs. Jackson is mistaken in giving the die-axis as

3 FITA introd. xii.

4 For that reason, the conclusions reached in this article have no especial relevance to this second issue. I have no reason to suppose that it was not struck at Dyrrhachium.

5 See, for example, Robert, L., Études de numismatique grecque (Paris, 1951) 69 and ref. ad loc.Google Scholar

6 Jenkins, G. K., Num Chron (1949) 36.Google Scholar

7 Numismatique de la Crète Ancienne (Macon, 1890).

8 The name in Josephus, Bell. 2, 63. 71 and Ant. 17, 282 was probably either a transliteration of Areus or a corrupt transliteration of the common name Arrius, while the Aria Cyriace on a late funerary inscription may well have been of Greek rather than Roman origin (Groag, and Stein, , Prosopographia Imperii Romani Saec. I, II, III pt. I (Berlin, 1933) 203Google Scholar, no. 1036 and 207, no. 1056). Even if these two references—and they appear to be the only evidence available—were held to show the existence of a. gens Aria, the expansion Titus Tarius suggested below is still preferable to Titus Arius: (i) references to bearers of the name Tarius, while by no means common, are at least more numerous and of indisputable authenticity (PWK Vol. IV A 2. 2320–3); (ii) Ti. is a more plausible abbreviation of Titus than Tit., especially when, as in die PI, the whole inscription is only five letters long.

The last-mentioned objection applies also to the possibility that the TITARIO of die P2 is in fact a mistake for TITARRIO. While references to the gens Arria are much more numerous than those to the gens Taria, the former family is not recorded as having any particular connection with Crete, and it would be perverse to postulate a flagrant spelling error when the present reading is perfectly intelligible.

9 Grant in fact worked from the letters TITAR only. Coin I has only TITAR. The only other piece Grant knew was probably 2c. This was struck from die P2 and hence had TITARIO, but it is afflicted by corrosion which obscures all but the first letter of that inscription.

10 Groag, PWK Vol. IV A 2. 2320–3.

11 Ibid. 2321; Grant, op. cit. 276 n. 14.

12 M. Guarducci, Inscriptions Creticae Vol. I (Rome, 1935) 53–5.

13 Ibid. 55; Grant, op. cit. 262.

14 Münsterberg, R., Die Beamtennamen auf den griechischen Münzen (reprint, Hildesheim, 1973) 57Google Scholar; Grant, loc. cit.; Ashton, R. H. J., Num Chron (1973) 42.Google Scholar

15 The single unaccompanied duumvirs cited in Grant, op. cit. 282 were quinquennales at the same time.

16 The ligature on die PI excludes combinations which involve splitting up the letters VE.

17 Delgado, , Nuevo Método de Clasificación de las Medallas Autónomas de España III 43Google Scholar; Heiss, Monnaies antiques de l'Espagne 197.