Ivo Lukanc (1926-1999) can best be described as being “a good guy” who lived life to the fullest and was passionate about everything he did. The photograph in our catalogue shows him as he really was: a happy man in the Alps with a Pyrenean Mountain Dog who was equally happy to be with him. He could be kind and generous, he was definitely fun to be with, and he was highly intelligent; however, he could also be very tough, especially if you disagreed with him, and once he got an idea into his head, that idea would basically be set in concrete! He was an economist, a journalist, a mountaineer and sportsman, a Slovenian patriot and a successful man in every way; he was obsessed by the Dalmatian emperor Diocletian and, as such, built up the most extensive collection of the gold coins of Diocletian ever formed. He was born in 1926 in the Yugoslav city of Pancevo (prior to 1918 it had been part of the Kingdom of Hungary): his father was Serbian and his mother Hungarian. The family was forced to flee to Ljubljana after Pancevo was occupied by the Germans in 1941, and the city was ruled by local Germans who attacked the Serbs and the Jews. While a high-school student in Ljubljana Ivo Lukanc joined the resistance. In 1950 he earned a degree in economics from the university; later, after his retirement, he received a doctorate in numismatics (!) from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 1995. He wrote several books, the most important of them, for us, was his Diocletianus, der Römische Kaiser aus Dalmatien (Wetteren, 1991), which was intended to be a corpus of Diocletian’s gold coinage. It has an introduction by Michel Amandry and a highly laudatory preface by G. Depeyrot. 

Diocletian - his given name was Gaius Valerius Diocles - was born in Dalmatia to a simple family but clearly had great ability, ambition and intelligence. This drove him to choose a career in the military, becoming a junior officer under Aurelian and Probus, and a cavalry commander under Carus. As recounted below he was proclaimed emperor after the revelation of the death of Numerian in 284 (and changed his name to Diocletianus from Diocles). From the onset he surrounded himself with a highly competent staff, which he certainly needed given the many reforms and changes he made to the organization of the Empire. He had presumably already realized that the extent of the Empire, and the many threats it faced, made it virtually impossible for a single man to rule on his own; so, in July 285 he made his colleague Maximian Herculeus Caesar, and on 1 April 286 he raised him to be co-Augustus and put him in charge of the West with his primary base in Treveri, while he took charge of the East, ruling from Nicomedia. From the start of his reign, he turned his attention to the various threatening barbarian tribes - the Quadi, Marcomanni and the Sarmatians - as well as to Sassanid Persia. In the West there was a successful campaign against the Alamanni, but the major threat was, from 286, Carausius’s breakaway ‘empire’ in Britain. In 293, continuing his reorganization of the Empire, Diocletian created a Tetrarchy: in addition to the two Augusti, there were two Caesares, in the West, with Maximian, there was Constantius (who finally regained Britain by his victory over Allectus in 296), and, subordinate to Diocletian in the East, Galerius (he had been involved both in Egypt and against the Persians). In 297 and 298 Diocletian was in Egypt suppressing the rebel Domitius Domitianus and mopping up his followers. There was war with Persia from 296 to 299; it ended with Galerius’s victories in 298 and the subsequent peace treaty of Nisibis the following year. The final years of Diocletian’s reign were overshadowed by his persecutions: first of the Manicheans starting in 302, and then, spurred on by Galerius, of the Christians. This last was particularly drastic, but basically confined to the East, and lasted until 311, well after Diocletian’s abdication - he had long been sick and seems to have died (perhaps by suicide) in 312. But Diocletian’s most important actions were his changes in the way the Empire was governed: the emperor’s position progressed from primus inter pares to autocrat, with all the ceremonial that implied; the bureaucracy expanded drastically; the army was reorganised; the provinces were increased from 50 to nearly 100 (they were reduced in size) and combined into larger units termed dioceses of which there were 12; taxation was reformed; laws were codified; the currency was regularized. Diocletian’s retirement in 305 was driven by his increasingly poor health. He moved to his palace on the Dalmatian coast, in the little town of Spalatum (today’s Split, in modern Croatia); much of it is preserved fairly intact. He seems to have begun building this ‘great house’ as early as 295, and the works surely continued after he had moved in. Diocletian’s wife was Aurelia Prisca, whom he had married well prior to becoming emperor. They had a daughter, Galeria Valeria, who subsequently married the then caesar Galerius in 293. Instead of joining Diocletian in Spalatum when he retired in 305, Prisca moved to Thessalonica to be with her daughter and sonin- law; after Galerius’s death in 311 she and her daughter were meant to be protected by Licinius, but they distrusted him and fled to Maximinus Daza. This proved to be a mistake, since he wanted to marry Galeria; when she refused, she was exiled to Syria. After Maximinus’s death in 313, Licinius condemned both Prisca and Galeria to death; they escaped but were recognized in Thessalonica in 315, turned in to Licinius’s soldiers, and executed. A sad end for the family of one of Rome’s greatest rulers. 

Diocletian’s first coins must have been issued very shortly after he was proclaimed emperor outside of Nicomedia in November 284. Numerian, the brother of Carinus and co-emperor after the death of their father Carus on campaign against the Persians in 283, was leading the orderly Roman withdrawal and had reached Emesa by March 283. At some point thereafter, Numerian, who had been ill and was being carried in a closed litter, seems to have died, either by assassination or through natural causes, but this was kept secret by the Praetorian Prefect, Arrius Aper, Numerian’s father-in-law. By the time the cortege reached Bithynia Aper was forced to reveal the emperor’s death: on 20 November 284 the Army unanimously proclaimed Diocletian (then still named Diocles) as their new Emperor; he immediately accused Aper of having murdered Numerian, drew his sword and killed the Prefect on the spot. One of the very first things Diocletian must to have done was to order coinage to be struck in his name; especially gold to pay donatives to his supporters (do note that while we say ‘the emperor ordered coins to be struck’ there must have been a committee or working group of experts in charge of getting it done). These gold aurei were struck, beginning in December 284, at the nearby mint of Cyzicus and the great eastern mint of Antioch. These mints continued striking on into 285 and later; after the death of Carinus in July 285, gold aurei were also struck in Lugdunum and Rome; then, starting in 286, in Ticinum and Siscia; Treveri, Nicomedia and Alexandria only started striking aurei in 294 (after the formation of the First Tetrarchy); gold issues from Carthage and Aquileia began in 297, and Thessalonica’s only issue was in 302. From west to east the range of dates for Diocletian’s gold coinage are as follows: 

Treveri 294-303 

Lugdunum 285-286

 Carthage 297-303

 Ticinum 286-304

 Rome 285-299

 Aquileia 297-303

 Siscia 286-304

 Thessalonica 302

 Nicomedia 294-303

 Cyzicus 284-294

 Antioch 284-305

 Alexandria 294-305

 Diocletian’s aurei were, interestingly enough, struck on two different weight standards: the earliest, from 284 to 286, were struck at 70 to the Roman pound - some marked with O and all weighing c. 4.50 g - while those struck after 286, when Maximianus was made co-Augustus on 1 April 286, were struck at a standard of 60 to the pound - some marked with a variant of Ξ and weighing c. 5.50 g. A convenient chronological marker was provided by certain reverse legends that, prior to 1 April 286, ended in AVG - indicating there was a single emperor; after the coronation of Maximianus they ended in AVGG. This change of standard seems to have been empire-wide in scope, and it is rather unlikely that it was done on the initiative of Diocletian alone; as already noted, he must have had what in modern times would be termed a committee of experts to advise him and put the change into effect. Interestingly enough, there were a very few gold coins that were struck on a heavier than normal standard; they weigh c. 6.30 g and exactly what they were meant to be is unclear (see lots 16 and 43). They were neither distinctive enough nor heavy enough to be multiple-aureus “medallions” or “multipli”: Lukanc, pp. 119-122, provides (pp. 119-122) a convenient list of them, ranging from 1 1/2 to 10 aurei in weight (8.93 - 54.45 g). So what were they? Perhaps they were designed to be donatives given to a select audience deserving of gifts better than standard aurei but less than true medallions. The modification of the weight standard of the gold coinage was not the only major change Diocletian’s “Council of Economic Advisors” made to the Empire’s monetary system: they brought back a fine silver ‘denarius’ (we call it the ‘argenteus’), the 5% silver bronze coin termed a “follis” , and a bronze radiate used as a fraction. Not only that, the coinage underwent a major iconographic transformation, especially the gold, silver and argentiferous bronze. As we see here, the early coin portraits of Diocletian (as lot 1) portray him as the standard adult military leader, bearded, laureate (or radiate), draped, and cuirassed (or not). In other words, it was the same basic portrait (apart from individual features) that had been used for every emperor from Macrinus to Carinus (of course there were some young and/or beardless emperors, as, for example, Elagabalus, Severus Alexander, Gordian III, Balbinus and Valerian I). Then, beginning in Rome in 287, things began to change, and a new official portrait was introduced; first in Rome and Cyzicus and then, by 291, in all the official mints in the Empire (Antioch continued with the old style until late 290). The imperial portrait was used as an image of power - with a simple but strong head - never draped in any way, laureate with militarily short hair, and a carefully cropped beard (as lot 32) - rather than as a clearly recognisable individual (though these heads, while all very similar, did have ‘individualistic aspects). Thus, when the imperial dyarchy became a tetrarchy there were now four ‘portraits’, each of a stern-looking powerful man, virtually indistinguishable from each other. Busts of this style continued as the standard obverse for over 20 years, but then things began to change under Constantine I. As early as 306, when he was Caesar, he appeared beardless on an aureus from Serdica (this could have been a die engraver’s error); normally, however, he had the same type of bearded portrait that all the rulers since the early 290s had (as on his issues as Caesar from Rome [306/307]; his FIL AVG issues from Thessalonica [309]; and his issues as Augustus from Thessalonica [310] and Antioch [311]). But around this time all his portraits become unmistakably beardless; in some ways these beardless heads and busts hark back to those of Trajan two hundred years earlier. Given when this happened, the Battle of the Milvian Bridge was in 312 and the Edict of Milan was in 313, could the suppression of Constantine’s bearded portraits be a sign of Constantine’s turn toward Christianity? In fact, beardless imperial portraits must have been considered a mark of Christianity; thus, the reaction to the beards worn by Julian II and Eugenius. As such for nearly three hundred years, until the reign of Phocas (602-610), no emperor wore a beard. From then on, with a very few exceptions for very young rulers, every subsequent emperor was bearded; after all, by this time the beard had moved from being a symbol of paganism to being an Imitation of Christ. 

Three of the aurei in the Lukanc Collection can be traced back to the very important Beaurains Hoard of 1922 (two definitely, lots 66 and 69, and one almost certainly, lot 43). Beaurains is a suburb of the French city of Arras (thus, this find was first termed the ‘Arras Hoard’), and it was there, during building work, that the find was uncovered. The best account of the entire discovery can be found in P. Bastien & C. Metzger’s Le Trésor de Beaurains (dit d’Arras), Wetteren, 1977, so only a brief summary needs to be here. The treasure included gold jewelry, silver household ware, some worn Roman silver coins, and a large number of Roman gold coins and medallions. Had the find been immediately secured when it was dug up everyone would be better off, but it was gathered up and then put into an unlocked shed overnight. No surprise, when it was inspected the next day, it was virtually all gone! This was compounded by the fact that some of the workers were Belgians from across the nearby border, so that the subsequent major international recovery effort was doubly difficult. As can be seen from Bastien’s excellent catalogue a great number of coins and medallions were recorded, but as he points out in his introduction (pp. 8-23), there have been rumors, some certainly true, that a good number of coins and medallions ‘got away’. After all, our lot 43 shows every sign as being from this find (and was identified as such in the Hess sale of 1931) but is missing from Bastien’s account. Perhaps the most famous of all the coins from Beaurains is, of course, the great gold 10 aureus medallion with the reverse legend REDDITOR LVCIS AETERNA, which shows the personification of London kneeling and welcoming Constantius Caesar; this medallion, minted in Treveri, is now in the museum at Arras (there is copy in the British Museum). But there has long been a rumour that another exists in a collection in Belgium, an escapee from that shed. Another rumour, and not really a far-fetched one, is that there was also at least one really enormous medallion, supposedly weighing approximately half a kilo (i.e., 100 aurei!) that was melted down (!) by the jeweler it was taken to by those Belgian workers since he did not believe it could possibly be real! What a hoard this is, but what a hoard it might have been!