Restored Smackdown III: My Empire! - Usurpers

I guess these two would fit this theme.






Postumus




Victorinus

Oh nice coins guys keep' em coming!

Great coins so far guys ...

My entry is a coin of the usurper Macrianus. He was, thanks to his father (Macrianus major) given Imperial power in the east, along with his brother Quietus. This occurred after the Roman army was defeated at Edessa by the Sassanids and the emporer Valerian was captured by them. Valerian spent the rest of his days as a foot stall for Shapur and was eventually killed, one rumour has it that he was forced to swallow molten gold. His body was stuffed and put on display in a Persian temple.

Macrianus marched on the the legitmate western emporer Gallienus but was defeated in Autumn 261. He was eventually killed by his own soldiers at the request of his father who also asked to be killed so they would avoid delivery to Gallienus's general Aureolus.





MACRIANUS. 260-261 AD. Antoninianus (23mm - 3.93 g). IMP C FVL MACRIANVS P F AVG, radiate and cuirassed bust right / IOVI CONSERVATORI, Jupiter seated left, holding patera in right hand, scepter in left, eagle at feet; star in left field. RIC V 9; RSC 8a.

Thanks ThisIsFun, it's one of my favioret coins.

Outstanding coin Jimbo!.

MAXIMINUS I (aka) THRAX


Whether you are considered a 'usurper' or the legitimate ruler often depends on how successful you are .....
And what much later writers have to say about it.

According to British Historian Edward Gibbon:

"He was conscious that his mean and barbarian origin, his savage appearance, and his total ignorance of the arts and institutions of civil life, formed a very unfavourable contrast with the amiable manners of the unhappy Alexander. He remembered that, in his humbler fortune, he had often waited before the doors of the haughty nobles of Rome, and had been denied admittance by the insolence of their slaves. He recollected too the friendship of a few who had relieved his poverty, and assisted his rising hopes. But those who had spurned, and those who had protected, the Thracian, were guilty of the same crime, the knowledge of his original obscurity. For this crime many were put to death; and by the execution of several of his benefactors Maximin published, in characters of blood, the indelible history of his baseness and ingratitude."

If Richard III had prevailed over Henry Tudor the tale of the sinister hunchback from York might read differently.
The Great Historian Edward Gibbon was the product of an extremely class conscious society. Who you were depended very much on where you came from ...... and 'upstarts' in the end got what was coming to them. Thus he is quite willing to accept the worst about Maximinus ...... after all he was a barbarian.

While the Emperor Macrinus had siezed power in a military 'coup' against the Severan dynasty and had hailed from the Berbers of Mauretania he had also an advanced education and could claim to be from the equestrian class.
Maximin had neither a formal education nor any claim to belong to a family of any importance. In fact according to the (unreliable) Augustan History he had a "Goth" father and an "Alan" mother. While some discount the presence of Goths in Thrace at this time the likelihood of Goths serving in the eastern legions seems fairly reasonable.
While his birth may have been obscure of one thing I am all but certain. He shows all the attributes of having 'suffered' from a condition known as 'giantism' or acromegaly. Early coins of Maximin show a reasonably good looking fellow who had risen through the ranks of the Roman Army and eventually deposed the Emperor Severus Alexander and permanently ended the Severan Dynasty. Later portraits show a frightening profile of a man who gained an unrivaled reputation as a savage and fierce ruler. Accounts claim he was over eight feet tall and strong enough in his younger days to actually lift an ox with his shoulders. I believe one reason for the discrepancy might be that at the start of his reign younger busts of the new Emperor were delivered to the various parts of the Empire which had been produced many years earlier. The later portraits of the fifty something emperor are startling. They must have been no less so to the Roman Senate. Their hatred for the Emperor was implacable and the Senatorial conspiracies were against him were several.
For the above reasons I place Maximinus as the first real "true" usurper. He wasn't one of 'them' and they hated him for it. The 'title' of Thrax was not one of endearment.
I do feel some sympathy for the first of the 'tyrants'. He may have been a misunderstood fellow who was not at all comfortable in the role of Emperor and quite out of place in 'polite society'. He was very much a military man and was famous as a Commander of Legions. Not as a politician. No one ever doubted his talents on the battlefield.


Nor do I suppose did anyone ever demand to see his birth certificate.


Maximinus I AE Sestertius
Obv Maximinus laureate draped bust right
MAXIMINVS PIVS AVG GERM
Rv VICTORIA GERMANICA Victory holding wreath with German captive at feet
Sear 8341 29-30mm 20.85 grams





I find this coin interesting for its use of the word GERMANICA. The different and individual tribes across the Rhine were beginning to be viewed as one foe,the 'Germans' or as some Roman authors called them "Allemanni". A term which survives to this day in both French and Spanish.




Maximinus I AE Sestertius
Obv. Maximinus laureate draped bust right
MAXIMINVS PIVS AVG GERM
Rv. PAX AVGVSTI Pax standing left holding scepter and olive branch
Sear 8332 30-32mm 21.17 grams

Eng, Claudius didn't usurp Caligula...

Caligula was killed by his Praetorian Guards, who then found Claudius hiding behind a curtain, certain he was going to be killed after him.

The Praetorians then took Claudius to their camp where they declared him Emperor.