VICTORIA AVGGG

Bust of Aelia Verina to the right, draped, wearing a diadem of pearls, a necklace of pearls and long earrings. Above, the hand of God crowning her.

An angel standing left, holding a long latin cross decorated with jewels. Behind her on the right, a star.

Coin illustrated in RIC X n ° 606 (second photo) which gave the legend: AEL VERI NA AVG. The quality of the photo is low and yet we seem to read a faulty legend ending in NA A A/ G. RIC no ° 606 is misclassified, neither of the two illustrated coins matches the legend noted. Source: Hermitage museum of Saint Petersburg.

For the classification of the legends and the form of the letters, click here: https://www.all-your-coins.com/en/emperors/romaines-imperiales/aelia-verina.

As I said in AYC # 1, the RIC listed legends with variants V, Y etc ... without knowing which copies were used for the analysis of letters. Legends noted  were they actually with V letters? Still, the officina letter has a Y shape, let's be clear: that is to say a V with a wide base. As on this copy where we can clearly see that the officina letter A has the same shape as the Y, but upside down. Anyway, the letters A on all types have the same shape as the Y's (which I describe as V with a wide base).

On the reverse I noted ''Angel'' in the description. We can also say that this is Victoria but the image of the victory at that time had indeed become that of an angel symbolizing the Christian victory. I note that this character is probably also a representation of the Empress in the guise of the angel. Indeed, the character often wears the same double pearl diadem and the clothes are decorated like those of Aelia Verina. I have noticed many times that on the coinage of various Empresses the character on the reverse is depicted as the Empress.