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ROMAN COINS] yellow brass (orichalcum), and the as semis and quadrans in common red copper. This distinction of metals, however, was sometimes ignored, as in the time of Nero, when we have sestertius (Pl. III. fig. 2), dupondius and as, all in brass, and of three different sizes. The as is usually nearly equal in size and Weight to the dupondius, but is distinguished by its metal and inferior fabric. All this brass and copper coinage bears the letters S.C., senatus consulto. Emperors not acknowledged by the senate are without such money; thus we have no specimens of Otho or Pescennius Niger.

Under Augustus the Roman monetary system became the official standard of the empire, and no local mint could exist without the imperial licence. Thus the Greek imperial money is strictly Roman money coined in the provinces, with the legends and types of the towns. Many cities were allowed to strike bronze, several silver. The kings of the Cimmerian Bosporus enjoyed the exceptional privilege of striking gold, which, however, became rapidly debased. The silver becomes limited about Nero’s time, but lasts under the Antonines, and is also found under Caracalla and Macrinus. It is chiefly supplied by the mints of Caesarea in Cappadocia, Antioch and subsidiary mints in Syria, and Alexandria in Egypt. None of these were strictly city-mints, but served the purposes of the provincial government. The bronze increased in mints and quantity in the 2nd century, but, through the debasement of the Roman silver, one city after another ceased to strike about the middle of the 3rd, The provincial mint of Alexandria, however, continued to strike

until the end of the century. From the coins of the ordinary Greek and other cities under the empire must be distinguished the issues of the Roman colonies. In the west these practically ceased in Nero’s time; in the east they lasted as long as the other Greek coinage. Purely Roman gold and silver was coined in certain of the provinces, in Spain and Gaul, and at the cities of Antioch and Ephesus. When the base silver had driven the Greek imperial bronze out of circulation, Gallienus established local mints which struck pure Roman types. Diocletian increased the number of these mints, which lasted until the fall of the empire of the West, and in the East longer. These mints were (with others added later), Londinium (or Augusta), Camulodunum, Treviri, Lugdunum, Arelate (or Constantina), Ambianum, Tarraco, Carthago, Roma, Ostia, Ravenna, Aquileia, Mediolanum, Siscia, Serdica, Sirmium, Thessalonica, Constantinopolis, Heraclea, Nicomedia, Cyzicus, Antiochia (ultimately Theupolis) and Alexandria. A few were speedily abandoned.

The obverse type of the imperial coins is the portrait of an imperial personage, emperor, empress or Caesar. The type only varies in the treatment of the head or bust—if male, laureate, radiate or bare; if female, sometimes veiled, but usually bare. The reverse types of the pagan period are mythological of divinities, allegorical

of personifications, historical of the acts of the emperors. Thus the coins of Hadrian, besides bearing the figures of the chief divinities of Rome, commemorate by allegorical representations of countries or cities the emperor’s progresses, and by actual representations his architectural works. Types often occur purely personal to the emperor, such as the sphinx which Augustus used as his signet, or the Capricorn, his natal sign. The most remarkable feature of imperial types is the increase of personifications, such as Abundantia, Concordia, Liberalitas, Pudicitia—for the most part drearily conventional. The inscriptions are either simply descriptive, such as the emperor’s names and titles in the nominative on the obverse, or partly on the obverse and partly on the reverse, and the name of the subject on the reverse; or else they are dedicatory, the imperial names and titles being given on the obverse in the dative and the name of the type on the reverse. Sometimes the reverse bears a directly dedicatory inscription to the emperor. The inscriptions on the earlier imperial coins from Tiberius to Severus Alexander are generally chronological, usually giving the current or last consulship of the emperor and his tribunitian year. It must be noted that Christian symbols first made their appearance on coins in an unsystematic, almost accidental way. The earliest instance is at the mint of Tarraco in 314, when a cross occurs as a symbol on the reverse. In 320 the Christian monogram is found as a detail in the field at several mints. But the types still remain pagan; these symbols are not introduced by order,