★ An interesting seal from the Provincia Illyricum ★

Provincia Illyricum, 3rd century. Seal (Lead, 18 mm, 9.17 g). PR ILI-VPVAS Salus seated left, holding a cornucopia in her left hand and feeding a serpent rising from an altar off a patera she is holding in her left hand. Apparently unpublished. An attractive and intriguing Roman seal. Extremely fine.

A number of very interesting Roman seals bear the names of cities and provinces. One seal that is contemporaneous to our example names Pamphylia and bears the image of a standing Fortuna (Dissard 703, Culica 28-29, Boersema/Dalzell, Vossen col. 171). Another seal identifies the 'region' of the Hellespont in its legend, paired with an image of a ram (Boersema/Dalzell, Vossen col. 172). Our seal with an image of a seated Salus likely belongs to the province of Illyricum. If our reading is correct, the name of the province appears in the Greek genitive form ('Illyrias'), but it is spelled in the Latin alphabet. The orthographic difficulties, particularly the Greek declension and the use of P for R and V for I, indicate that the seal matrix engraver was a Greek.