Lot 3046
Vespasian. Æ Sestertius (26.97 g), AD 69-79. 'Judaea Capta' type. Rome, AD 71. IMP CAES VAESPASIAN AVG P M TR P P P COS III, laureate head of Vespasian right. Reverse: IVDEA CAPTA, S C in exergue, palm tree; to left, emperor standing right, foot on cuirass, holding spear and parazonium; to right, Jewess in attitude of mourning seated right on cuirass. RIC 168, note; cf. BMC 545-7 (foot on helmet); cf. BN 499 (same); Kraay A10/P98 (die combination not recorded); Hendin 1504a. An extremely rare variety of the IVDEA legend reverse. Uniform chocolate brown patina with some expert light smoothing in the fields. Choice Very Fine.
RIC notes that Kraay, in his unpublished doctoral dissertation (1953), records one reverse die (P98) showing Vespasian's foot resting on a cuirass rather than the normal helmet. He recorded just two examples, nos. 249 and 252 (from Cambridge and Copenhagen, respectively). Both share the reverse die with our coin, but were struck from different obverse dies.
Vespasian Sestertius IVDEA CAPTA inscription
A remarkably rare spelling of the obverse inscription: IVDEA CAPTA; only one die is listed in RIC. This interesting variety of Vespasian's 'Judaea Capta' series is worthy of note, since it expresses a linguistic phenomenon occurring in the Latin-speaking world.
The more common inscription of IVDAEA is a Latinization of the Greek word Iudaia, with both the 'ai' in the Greek and the 'ae' in the Latin diphthong having a value similar to the long 'i' in 'high.'
In the late Republic and early Empire, in common speech as well as in non-formal writing, the 'ae' morphed into 'e'. This change is attested as early as in the essays of Marcus Terentius Varro, and the comedies of Plautus, as well as in graffiti of the period. Though there was an attempt for centuries to maintain the diphthong 'ae' in formal spelling, the Romance language evidence shows that eventually the linguistic change to 'e' had eventually spread across the entire Latin-speaking world.
We would like to suggest that the variant spelling of IVDEA on this sesterius, rather than the more formal spelling of IVDAEA, reflects a 'creeping in' of the parallel spelling of 'e' instead of 'ae,' the written representation of a pronunciation that was current in many areas of the empire in the period.
Estimated Value $8,000 - 10,000.
Ex Gemini V (6 January 2009), 262.
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| Realized $14,688 |
