Rare Family Miliarense

Sale: CNG 76, Lot: 1634. Estimate $2000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 12 September 2007.  Sold For $1700. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Constantine I, with Crispus and Constantine II Caesars. AD 307/310-337. AR Miliarense (4.08 g, 12h). Sirmium mint. Struck AD 320. Bare head of Constantine I right / Confronted heads of Crispus and Constantine II; SIRM. RIC VII 14; Gnecchi pl. 29, 8; Bastien, Donativa, p. 76, note 11. VF, some porosity.

The coinage of Constantine's long reign is very complex. He instituted several important currency reforms, including the introduction of a new gold denomination (the solidus) and, later in the reign, the reestablishment of coinage in pure silver (e.g. siliqua). This rare dynastic type, struck at the Danubian mint of Sirmium, depicts on the reverse the emperor's two elder sons — Flavius Julius Crispus, the issue of Constantine’s marriage to Minervina (his first wife or, perhaps, merely a concubine); and Flavius Claudius Constantinus, the eldest of his three sons by Flavia Maxima Fausta, daughter of the emperor Maximianus. The head of Crispus, who was aged about 21 at the time of the issue, is depicted larger and more mature than that of his half-brother who was only eight. This base silver coin, which is sometimes described as a ‘small medallion’ or a ‘multiple,’ is of an experimental denomination which preceded the reintroduction of pure silver coinage circa AD 325. It should probably be called a miliarense which is the name applied to the pure silver coin of the same weight (4.5 grams = 1/72 of a pound) struck regularly after AD 325.