AD68 fiddling while Rome burns -post your Roman denarii pics

Wow, am I jealous...

Nice find!

The early Empire was a time of realism for coin portraiture. If the emperor was ugly, the coins showed him as ugly. This contrasts strongly with the "idealism" of Greek coinage, which minimised flaws and accentuated beauty, and the "abstraction" of later Roman and Byzantine coins, where the portrait is intended to show the power, majesty, grandeur and authority of the office of emperor, rather than the identity of the emperor himself.

You could take an early Roman Empire coin, and use it to pick the emperor's face out from amongst a crowd.


I have 42 of them, ranging from the early Republic period (my earliest is attributed to 157 BC) up to the mid-200's AD, by which time the denarius was fast becoming obsolete.


Four of them are already in my gallery: this one of Caracalla...


...another one of the same emperor...


...this one of Elagabalus....


...and this one of Hadrian, which I only seem to have scanned the reverse of...


I've just added a fifth to the gallery - my most recently acquired denarius filled a hole in my OFERE collection (one from each Roman emperor): Nero's successor, Galba. This one also dates from 68 AD:

Those denarii are in beautiful condition...impressive!
Sap, thanks for the info

WOW, compare that to my large group of three.

I do actually have quite a few silver "double-denarii" (commonly known as antoniniani), my favorites being of Philip the Arab and his son Philip II.

I have just two denarii. I've posted them before but this is a good time to bring 'em out again!

The older is Naevius Balbus, dating from 79 BC, depicting Venus on the obverse and a 3-horse chariot (Triga?) on the reverse. This is a "serrate" denarius with the notches around the edge.




The other is from 220 AD and shows Julia Paula (wife of Elagabalus) on the obverse and Concordia on the reverse.

Very nice denarii, Sap! So the 'S' in COS was entered backwards on the Hadrian?
What do the seven stars and crescent represent?

Yep. The die engraver must have been a trainee, or in a hurry, or had a cold or something - the S is backwards, the O is filled in, the stars are randomly scattered about instead of a neat hexagonal pattern like they normally are on this type, and the centration hole which was supposed to be masked by one of the stars, is showing as a small "8th star" in the centre of the coin. All in all, a very sloppy job.

Not that I'm complaining, mind.


I don't think we know for sure. Unlike the "comet coins" of Augustus, I don't think it records a particular astronomical event, because this reverse can be found on coins of several emperors. I've always imagined the Moon symbol was linked with the cult of the goddess Diana/Artemis, and the seven stars represent the seven hills of Rome. Thus the coin symbolizes Diana embracing and protecting Rome.