The Roman Empire
Septimius Severus, 193 – 211
Aureus 202-210, AV 7.15 g. SEVERVS – PIVS AVG Laureate, draped and cuirassed bust r. Rev. INDVLGEN – TIA AVGG The Dea Caelestis riding r. on lion, holding drum in r. hand and sceptre in l.; below, water gushing from rock. In exergue, IN CARTH. C 217. BMC 333. RIC 267b. Calicó 2462.
Very rare. A superb portrait and an interesting reverse composition, good extremely fine Ex Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, 13 July 1908, O’Hagan, 502; Hess-Leu 41, 1969, 287 and Leu 87, 2003, Perfectionist, 53 sales. From the V.M. Brand collection.
This interesting type, INDVLGENTIA AVGG IN CARTH (‘the indulgence of the Augusti towards Carthage’), suggests Septimius Severus and Caracalla made improvements to Carthage, the North African capital to the west of the imperial family’s native Tripolitana. The evidence is slim, but it seems the imperial family and its entourage crossed to Africa in 202, a few months after they had returned to Rome from a five-year absence in the East. The family apparently wintered in Lepcis Magna, Severus’ home town (which he may not have visited for about thirty years) and they returned to Rome in the following year. In addition to touring the region and overseeing building projects, the Severan entourage was in North Africa to deal with military matters, including a campaign against the tribes who raided Roman provinces from the deserts to the south and east. The reverse depicts a towered goddess sitting upon a lion that springs from a rocky outcrop from which water flows. This latter feature has led to the suggestion that aqueducts or waterworks of some kind in Carthage were constructed or repaired at state expense. A similar scene appears on imperial coins struck by Commodus in 191/2, and earlier still on rare imperial bronzes of Faustina Senior, though in both cases without the rocks and flowing water. The goddess riding the lion is Cybele (Mater Deum; ‘mother of the Gods’) or Dea Caelestis (‘celestial goddess’), essentially the Roman identification of Tanit (the patron goddess of Carthage), who may be more precisely understood as a moon- goddess, who the Romans equated with Juno Caelestis or Cybele. On this aureus she holds a sceptre and a musical instrument that is a tympanum (a small drum or tambourine) or a crotalum (castanets or cymbals), although on some other coins from the series she holds a sceptre and thunderbolt. Curiously, more than a decade later Elagabalus chose to marry his Emesan sun-god Heliogabalus to the Carthaginian moon-goddess Dea Caelestis, thus uniting sun and moon deities and symbolically linking the Syrian and North African ancestries of the Severan dynasty.