Catalog
1 Triens
| Issuer | Uncertain city of Central Italy |
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| Year | 301 BC - 201 BC |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 92.45 g |
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| Obverse description | Heavily corroded and encrusted obverse of a cast bronze aes grave triens, showing the faint, worn relief of what appears to be a central device, likely a pellet or simplified motif, characteristic of the anonymous central Italian aes grave series. The broad, flat flan exhibits an irregular, lobate periphery typical of primitive cast coinage. Surface detail is largely obscured by dense patination and encrustations accumulated over two millennia. No legend or inscription is present, consistent with the anonymous nature of this emission. The overall fabric and style place this piece firmly within the tradition of central Italian cast bronze coinage of the third century BC. |
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| Edge | Plain |
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| Additional information |
The heavy cast bronzes of uncertain Central Italian origin occupy one of the more contested corners of pre-Roman numismatics. This triens belongs to a group whose civic attribution has never been settled — Haeberlin, Thurlow-Vecchi, and the HN Italy corpus each approach the problem differently, and none has produced a definitive answer. The Samnite Wars and Rome's gradual consolidation of the peninsula during this century created precisely the kind of administrative instability that leaves coins without clear issuers.
At this weight, the piece sits near the heavier end of surviving examples, suggesting an early production date within the type's range before systematic reduction brought cast aes grave weights down.