ROMAE AETERNAE
a curious cryptogram
 

Constantine I
A.D. 320
20x19mm 3.0gm
Obv. CONSTA-NTINVS AVG  helmeted and cuirassed bust right.
Rev. ROMAE AETERNAE [To everlasting Rome, fifteen yearly vows (quindecennalia)] Roma std. r., shield in lap inscribed X/V
in ex. R ЄѠC Q
RIC VII Rome 194 

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      Part of this mint mark is a cryptogram, and is Greek for eros, which in Latin is amor. Amor and Roma are palindromes-- they read the same backward or forward. Amor was the secret name of Rome. This may have been an attempt by the pagan aristocracy of Rome to use the old religion of mystery and romance to confront the pro-Christian policies of Constantine.¹ The first letter in this mintmark is the Latin letter “R”, for Rome. The next symbol is a ligature, which consists of two Greek letters epsilon and rho, and then an upward sweep which transforms the ligature into the Greek letter omega. What looks like a “C’ is actually the Greek letter sigma. The last letter is the Latin letter “Q’, which is the officina, there were four workshops at this time- P, S, T and Q. The Greek cryptogram section reads epsilon rho omega sigma or Eros.

    The Romans were fond of palindromes, and there is a famous example in Virgil’s Aenid (4:37), where Aeneas said to Dido that the oracle commanded him to go to the land of his “amor”-- which is Roma. Sidonius Apollinaris was a Gallo-Roman poet who lived from A.D. 430-480. He was the author of a classic palindrome-- roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor, which roughly translates as "Rome, your love will suddenly collapse in disturbances."
 
 

    This mintmark was not only used for Constantine I; it was used on coins for all the rulers at the time. The cryptogram was also used on a series of votive coins

Constantine I
A.D. 320- 321
19mm   3.2gm
CONSTAN-TINVS AVG; Laureate head right.
DN CONSTANTINI MAX AVG laurel wreath enclosing VOT XX
In ex. R ЄѠC P  
RIC VII Rome 225

Constantine I
A.D. 320
19mm    3.6gm
CONSTANTINVS AVG; helmeted and cuirassed bust right.
ROMAE AETERNAE [To everlasting Rome, fifteen yearly vows (quindecennalia)] Roma std. r., shield in lap inscribed X/V [note that Victory holds a clear example of a stylus that she used to inscribe the shield]
in ex. R ЄѠC P
RIC VII Rome 194 

ex C. B. Hoard

¹Alföldi, Andrew. The Conversion of Constantine and Pagan Rome. translated by Harold Mattingly. Oxford University Press, 1998, pg. 80.

  Alfoldi gives some references in a footnote. One reference is Jules Maurice in Numismatique Constantinienne (published 1908). Maurice only mentions the Roma/ Amor/ Eros connection and then references H Dressel in Zeitschrift fur Numismatik xxii 1899; which was written almost 50 years before the Alfoldi book, so numismatists have been talking about the subject of the cryptogram for many years now.