Catalog
Semis
| Issuer | Ipses |
|---|---|
| Year | 100 BC - 1 BC |
| Type | Standard circulation coin |
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| Obverse description | Bare head of Hercules in left profile, rendered in a bold archaic Iberian style with coarse, summary features. The hair is depicted in thick, unrefined locks falling behind the neck, with minimal facial detail visible due to the heavy patination and irregular flan. The field is plain and unadorned, with no legend or inscription present on this side. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | A Cupid or Eros figure rides a dolphin leaping to the left, depicted in a dynamic, schematic composition characteristic of late Iberian bronze coinage. The dolphin's body arches prominently across the field, its head turned upward. Below the central motif, the Latin civic legend IPSES is inscribed in capital letters, identifying the issuing community. The design occupies an irregular, somewhat compact flan typical of hammered provincial issues of the 1st century BC. |
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| Additional information |
Ipses was a small Iberian settlement whose exact location remains disputed among researchers, generally placed somewhere in the northeastern Hispania Citerior region. The civic bronze issues attributed to it — catalogued under ACIP 2625 — are rare enough that the town's very identification depends almost entirely on the coin record itself, with no corroborating literary source of any weight. The semis denomination places this squarely within the Roman-influenced fractional coinage system that Iberian municipalities adopted during the late Republican period as monetization of local economies accelerated under Roman administrative pressure.