QUICK QUIZ #1 - ANSWERS
Entries Closed:
Congratulations to 'T.V.' for being the first (only!) to correctly guess (deduce!)
all three portraits to be of the Emperor Aurelian, 270-275. Well Done.
Those of you who guessed that the portraits were of Claudius II were also somewhat correct, because whilst the inscription around the coins indicated 'AVRELIANVS' the portrait appears to be greatly influenced by that of his predecessor, Claudius. You see, these coins appear to be from the earliest periods of Aurelian's reign. Before the mints could get the portrait busts from which they could take the correct image, they had to improvise by using whatever they had to hand - in this case they simply used the portrait of Claudius, or a slightly modified version of it. When the portrait busts arrived at the mint the portraits were adjusted accordingly. The same can be seen on the earliest coins of a number of emperors including, among others, Vitellius, Trajan and Severus Alexander.
And here is the full picture of the three coins in question.
A: Siscia mint, B: Rome mint and C: Milan mint.
Below are the statistics for all who submitted their guesses (22).
| A | B | C | |||
| Aurelian | 7 | Claudius II | 7 | Aurelian | 9 |
| Claudius II | 6 | Quintillus | 7 | Claudius II | 8 |
| Gallienus | 3 | Probus | 2 | Probus | 3 |
| Treb.Gallus | 1 | Tetricus I | 1 | Quintillus | 1 |
| Tacitus | 1 | Tetricus II | 1 | Valerian I | 1 |
| Carausius | 1 | Aurelian | 1 | ||
| Probus | 1 | Maximinus | 1 | ||
| Macrinus | 1 | Postumus | 1 | ||
| Eastern Tetrarchic Ant. | 1 | Gallienus | 1 |
