Mars Rome 313 AD - chlamys wrapped around left arm

[Heliodromus]

Constantine's early Rome Marti types are quite scarce, so I was happy to just receive this RIC VI Rome 306a (Mars standing left, head right) to add to the RIC VI Rome 308 (Mars standing right) I got last year.





My RIC 306a has the bonus of being an obverse die link to Vienna's RIC 307 (ex. Voetter), below.



It's interesting to compare the positioning of Mar's chlamys on the std R vs std L (head R) varieties, which is a detail RIC doesn't mention. On the std R type (RIC 307-310) Mar's chlamys hangs over his right shoulder, while on the std L type (RIC 305-306) his chlamys is wrapped around his left arm, which according to "A Dictionary of Roman Coins" (Stevenson, Smith & Madden) is the way the chlamys was worn during fighting to afford some additional protection to the left arm, making this a more aggressive pose perhaps.

https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=chlamys

It's also interesting to compare Mar's std L (head R) vs std R poses to this error variety Nikko posted a while back.



Mars here is nominally shown left handed(!!) (spear in left hand) rather awkwardly posed, but it seems the engraver (perhaps not used to this pose?), forgot to mirror the image and it was really intended as std L, head R (i.e. attribute as RIC 306a error variety). However note that in his confusion the engraver also forgot to switch the chlamys from it's std R to std L positioning!



Incidentally, note that RIC VI Rome 364-367 (issue with star in field) are misdescribed as Mars std R, when in reality they are also Mars std L, head R, again with chlamys wrapped around left arm. For example, here's the BM's (ex. Bastien) RIC 365.

[Victor]

I like the idea of the cloak wrapped around the arm for protection. I have seen examples before and did not pay it much attention.