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XXI

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SALVIS AVGG ET CAESS FEL KART

Latin abbreviation: Saluis Augustoris et Caesaribus Felicitas Karthago - Blessed Carthage, for the Salvation of the two Augusti and two Caesars.

This coin refers to the good fortune provided by Carthage to the emperors. When the Nile floods were deficient and Egypt suffered scarcity, Roman ships importing wheat steered for Carthage, from which they brought back a sufficient supply to the eternal city.


Officina Assignments

By Heliodromus (Ben)


See the original Classical Numismatics Discussion post and follow-on conversation

The emperor-officina assignments of the tetrarchic "Salvis Avgg Et Caess Fel Kart" Carthage type are interesting. Well, at least a little bit interesting!  

There were a number of issues of this type for the initial tetrarchy, then one for each of the subsequent line-ups. Starting with the last pre-abdication issue (RIC VI Carthage 33-34), someone decided to make the type even more "tetrarchic" by adding an "I" or "H" to the reverses, thereby noting the emperor on the obverse either as a member of the eastern house of I(vpiter) or western house of H(ercules).

Of course these I/H reverse markings needed to be paired with appropriate obverses, and mixing unintended pairings within a single officina was asking for trouble, so the mint rapidly chose to strictly assign each emperor to a different officina (this didn't happen immediately since Diocletian can be seen, unlisted, at multiple officinas).

As the tetrarchic line-up changed, with some members leaving (e.g. abdication) and others joining (new caesars), officinas needed to be reassigned. One obvious way to do this would have been to reassign freed officinas to new members of the tetrarchy, but we can see they didn't choose to do it this way, and instead *all* of the officina assignments changed with each change of the tetrarchic line up, as shown in the table below.

On closer examination, we can see that the way officinas appear to have been assigned is on the basis of seniority, with more senior members getting the lower officina number/letter (e.g. A=1 for Diocletian). We have three sets of changes after the initial assignments of RIC 33-34:

1) After the abdication of Diocletian and Maximianus, Constantius and Galerius are now the senior members and move up from officinas 3&4 to officinas 1&2, with the new caesars assigned the lowly 3&4, giving us RIC 39-40

2) After the death of Constantius, the remaining three members (Galerius, Severus and Maximinus) move up to officinas 1-3, and newly recognized Constantine becomes low man on the totem pole at officina 4, giving us RIC 43-44

3) Finally, after Maxentius usurps, Carthage immediately stops recognizing Galerius and Severus, and add Maxentius and his co-usurper, Dad, to the line-up instead. Here we can really see the assignments by seniority at play. Herculius Senior gets officina #1, Maximinus and Constantine move up to officinas 2&3, and Maxentius gets junior officina #4, giving us RIC 50-51.

What's interesting about this, given this pretty obvious assignment-by-seniority is what the actual pecking order was (at this fleeting point in time), with Maximianus #1, and Maxentius #4 behind Constantine and Maximinus.

From a collector's point of view these changing officina assignments are great since they effectively "date" the coins to a given tetrarchic line-up. For example, if you have a Constantine officina Delta you know if was issued by Severus as augustus, whereas if you have officina Gamma you know it was issued by Maxentius.

I'm using a coin I've had a long time to illustrate the type since it's uber-nice and deserves a second showing!


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