by Mike Markowitz for CoinWeek
With this series of coins, Decius may have sought to invoke the support of his deified predecessors during a period when problems within the Empire were widespread. The eleven emperors who had made Rome great could be of assistance in countering the problems that Decius faced. [ Manders (2009) page 32 ]
Trajan Decius, Roman emperor from 249 to 251, was a Senator during the reign of his predecessor, Philip “the Arab.” Decius was proclaimed emperor by his troops after suppressing a rebellion in the frontier province of Moesia. In 249, he defeated and killed Philip, and the Senate recognized him as emperor.
He tried to enforce the Roman state religion by persecuting Christians (including Pope St. Fabian, martyred in 250). In 251, Decius and his son Herennius Etruscus were killed by invading Goths at the Battle of Abritus (near modern Razgrad, Bulgaria).
“Deification” (apotheosis in Greek) was one way Romans honored deceased former emperors by elevating them to the status of gods. Roman religion drew a sharp distinction between an actual god (male Deus or female Dea in Latin) and a mortal who became divine (male Divus or female Diva).
The first historic example was the deification of Julius Caesar in 42 BC by his adopted son, Octavian (who later became emperor Augustus Caesar.) Subsequent emperors sometimes deified a popular predecessor or his relatives to gain legitimacy and popularity with the Roman people.
As part of his effort to promote traditional beliefs, Trajan Decius issued a series of coins commemorating eleven of his deified predecessors. Numismatists refer to these coins as the Divi series, or the “Consecration” or “Restoration” coinage of Trajan Decius.
Some deified former emperors were not included and numismatists are baffled by who made the list and who did not. There were no coins for Julius Caesar, Claudius, Lucius Verus, Pertinax or Caracalla, who were all deified.
The coins were antoniniani, or “double denarii” of debased silver. Carelessly struck, often from worn dies on ragged blanks, these pieces generally bear portraits of excellent quality, suggesting that the engravers were familiar with coins that were as much as two centuries old at the time. Each emperor depicted wears the spiked “radiate crown” that was the symbol for the double denarius denomination, although it is very unlikely that any of these men would have ever actually worn such headgear.
There were two different reverses: one type shows a square altar topped by a flame, the other shows an eagle, companion of the god Jupiter, that was believed to carry the souls of the deified to Olympus to dwell among the gods.
Minor differences in the obverse inscriptions make the complete set total about thirty different types. The usual obverse inscription is in the “dative case” – the Latin grammatical form that hails the subject — “to the Divine So-and-so.” The reverse inscription is CONSECRATIO, the Latin term for making something or someone sacred.
The portrait of Augustus on this type is unusually mature. Most of the coin portraits from the long reign of Augustus Caesar (27 BCE to 14 CE) show him as a youthful twenty-something, although he lived to the advanced age of 75.
A tough military man with a wry sense of humor, Vespasian ruled from 69 to 79
CE after crushing the revolt of the Jews, and defeating a series of rivals in the “Year of Four Emperors”. Vespasian’s ironic last words to his attendants before he died were “Woe is me. I think I’m turning into a god” (Vae, puto deus fio).
The elder son of Vespasian, Titus was nearly 40 when he succeeded his father but lived only a further two years. The Arch of Titus in Rome commemorates his destruction of Jerusalem and triumph over the rebellious Judeans.
Remembered as the first of the “Five Good Emperors” Nerva ruled from 96 to 98 CE. At the age of 66 he was declared emperor by the Senate on the day his predecessor, the tyrannical Domitian, was assassinated. His main accomplishment was adopting a young, popular, and victorious general, Trajan, as his successor.
Under the rule of Trajan (98 – 117 CE) the Roman empire reached its greatest territorial extent. The Senate awarded him the title of Optimus (“the best”) which appears on his coins beginning in 105 CE. His monumental sculptured column still stands as a landmark in Rome. Emperor Decius was born as Gaius Messius Quintus Decius Valerinus; the Senate awarded him the additional name “Trajan” after he was proclaimed emperor.
Born in Spain in 76 CE, Hadrian was adopted as Trajan’s successor, reigning from 117 to 138. Hadrian spent much of his reign visiting the empire’s far-flung provinces.
Antoninus reigned as emperor from 138 to 161 CE. The historian Edward Gibbon wrote of him: His reign is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history; which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. In private life, he was an amiable as well as a good man. The native simplicity of his virtue was a stranger to vanity or affectation. He enjoyed with moderation the conveniences of his fortune, and the innocent pleasures of society; and the benevolence of his soul displayed itself in a cheerful serenity of temper.
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776)
The Senate awarded him the honorific title Pius (meaning “dutiful”) which became part of his name and appears on the coin (DIVO PIO.)
Antoninus Pius adopted young Marcus Aurelius as his successor. In 145, Antoninus Pius gave Marcus his own daughter, Faustina “the Younger,” in marriage. Marcus became emperor when Antoninus died in 161. Marcus wrote a series of “Meditations” reflecting the philosophy of Stocism that is still read and admired today.
Coins honoring Marcus are the rarest of the Divo issues of Trajan Decius.
Villain of the Hollywood film Gladiator (2000), Commodus was one of Rome’s worst emperors. The only son of Marcus Aurelius, he proved to be a monster: cruel, capricious, and delusional. He came to believe that he was the reincarnation of Hercules, and on some of his coins he wears the mythic hero’s lion skin and is identified as “Roman Hercules” He was assassinated in a palace coup in 192 CE. In 195, Septimius Severus, rehabilitated Commodus’s memory and had the Senate deify him.
Founder of the so-called “Severan dynasty,” Septimius Severus ruled from 193 to 211. He was the victor in a complex civil war, the “Year of Five Emperors” He unwisely bequeathed the empire to his two sons, Caracalla and Geta, who hated each other; a story thoroughly mangled in the Hollywood film Gladiator II (2024).
Severus Alexander became emperor at the age of 13 when his cousin, the bizarre Elagabalus was assassinated in 222. Last ruler of the Severan dynasty, he was murdered by disgruntled troops, along with his mother, in 235, beginning a chaotic era remembered as the “Crisis of the Third Century,” or the Military Anarchy.
Collecting the God-Emperors
Assembling a complete set of Divi series coins of Trajan Decius would be an interesting challenge for a patient and determined collector of modest means. On the CoinArchives Pro database, which archives over 2,600,000 auction records of the past three decades, a search on the terms DIVO and “Trajan Decius” produced 1172 hits. Prices ranged from under $100 to over $1000 for exceptional specimens. The most common types were Antoninus Pius (211 hits) and Severus Alecander (123), the scarcest were Marcus Aurelius (45) and Nerva (26).
References
Adkins, Leslie and Roy Adkins. Dictionary of Roman Religion. New York (1996)
Elks, K.J. “Reattribution of the Milan Coins of Trajan Decius to the Rome Mint.”Numismatic Chronicle 12 (1972)
Manders, Erika. “Communicating messages through coins: a new approach to the
emperor Decius.” Jaarboek voor Munt- en Penningkunde 96 (2009)
Sear, David. Roman Coins and Their Values, Vol. III. London (2005)
Vagi, David. Coinage and History of the Roman Empire. Sidney, OH (1999)
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