The Coinage Of Postumus

The Roman general Marcus Cassianius Latinius Postumus served under emperor Gallienus, and was responsible for the defense of the border along the river Rhine. After spending many years in Gaul to uphold the defense against attacking Germanic tribes, Gallienus left together with a large part of the army to deal with problems in the East. Postumus successfully repelled the Germanic tribes that took the opportunity to renew their attacks. In 260, he is declared emperor by his troops. (This is a super short version of a long sequence of events, the details of which can be easily found online.)

Postumus establishes what becomes known as the Gallic Empire. It lasts 260-274 and when as largest, it covered Gaul, Spain, Britain, and Raetia (today's southern Germany and surroundings). Postumus was killed by his own troops in 269, when he refused them to sack the city of Mainz after having put down a rebellion. He was succeeded by a number of more short-lived Gallic emperors, until Aurelian defeats the usurper empire in 274.

Postumus has a very rich coinage, featuring a wide range of motifs, not least many different deities. Besides Roman gods and goddesses, Greek, Oriental, Egyptian, and Germanic deities figure on his coins. I thought I could show a few from my collection - antoniniani, mostly. Postumus coined the whole range of denominations from as to aureus, but the antoniniani are the ones most readily available and they also have a very varied range of motifs.

I invite you to show your Postumus coins too!

I will show one coin per post and try to give some background to the choice of motif. Some of it is pure guesswork (not by me, but by people better equipped at guessing ), since there really isn't any documentation from the time and few archeological records to support one view or another. We mostly have only the coins themselves. There isn't even consensus about where minting took place - RIC states Lugdunum (Lyon) as the main mint, but more recent research points to Colonia Agrippina (Cologne) and/or Treveri (Trier) as the mints used by Postumus. It is an important and interesting question, but I will not engage in it in this thread. That is also the reason I will not state place of mint for the coins I show.

When it comes to fineness and weight, it is generally accepted that Postumus improved the antoninianus coinage compared to the previous emperors and compared to that of Gallienus, who continued to run the rest of the empire. There is some evidence pointing to a slight increase in weight and a decrease in fineness during Postumus's rule, but I will not go into that. The average weight of his antoniniani is around 3.2 g, with at least 1.2 g variation upwards and downwards. The fineness is 10-20 % silver content. (The Gallic emperors who succeeded Postumus reduced both weight and fineness of their antoniniani considerably.)

Dating is also a bit conjectural. I use the dates provided in L'Empire Gaulois by Parisot et al, editions Les Chevau-legers, 2011. Don't take them as absolute truths.

But let's get started. Here is the first coin, one of the earliest minted by Postumus:

Antoninianus, 260-261. Billon, 3.43 g, 23 mm. RIC V Postumus 64.



Obverse: IMP C POSTVMVS P F AVG (Imperator Cæsar Postumus Pius Felix Augustus). Postumus with radiate crown. All the antoniniani I show have this obverse.
Reverse: HERC DEVSONIENSI (Herculi Deusoniensi / To Deusonian Hercules). Hercules with his club, holding bow and skin of the Nemean lion.

Hercules is a favorite of Postumus and appears in several series of his coins. (One of particular interest is a series depicting the twelve labors of Hercules, a rare series which I would love to have.) The Greek Bronze Age superhero Heracles was adopted by the Romans as Hercules and was a popular companion on coins by several emperors. The "Deusonian Hercules" featured here might be a local adaptation of the deity in a place named Deusone. Where that is is not entirely clear - today's Diessen or Doesburg in the Netherlands are two possibilities. And why that place figures on Postumus's coins is also unclear. Was it his birthplace, the place where he was proclaimed emperor, or where he used to go fishing during his vacation ? We don't know.