DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51762#0100
HISTORICAL ROMAN COINS
The coin of L. Saufeius bears the device of
Victory in a biga, another of the types which helped
to break down the monopoly of the Dioscuri. It
is probably to coins like this and the preceding
that Tacitus refers when he alludes to the popularity
among the northern barbarians of the coins bearing a
biga.1
If we seek a motive for the adoption in the period
172—151 of Victory as a new type for the denarius
we may find it in the signal successes which in this
period attended the Roman arms. The crushing
defeat of Antiochus the Great at Magnesia in 190 b.c.
had placed the whole of the Levant virtual] y at the
feet of Rome. But even more striking, because much
nearer home, was the victory at Pydna in 168—that
final humiliation of the Greeks which allowed Rome
to enter upon the inheritance of Alexander the Great.
It is not surprising that such a change in her position
should be reflected in the coinage.
The type of Sex. Pompeius Fostlus, on the other
hand, is one of those personal types which began to
appear once it was felt that change in the reverse type
of the denarius was permissible. The process is
characteristic of Roman historical development: first,
complete uniformity ; then the beginnings of change,
1 Germ. 5 : pecuniam probant veterem et diu notam, serratos bigatosque.
The serrati are the coins with notched, or serrated edges, regarding
which see No. 47.
60
The coin of L. Saufeius bears the device of
Victory in a biga, another of the types which helped
to break down the monopoly of the Dioscuri. It
is probably to coins like this and the preceding
that Tacitus refers when he alludes to the popularity
among the northern barbarians of the coins bearing a
biga.1
If we seek a motive for the adoption in the period
172—151 of Victory as a new type for the denarius
we may find it in the signal successes which in this
period attended the Roman arms. The crushing
defeat of Antiochus the Great at Magnesia in 190 b.c.
had placed the whole of the Levant virtual] y at the
feet of Rome. But even more striking, because much
nearer home, was the victory at Pydna in 168—that
final humiliation of the Greeks which allowed Rome
to enter upon the inheritance of Alexander the Great.
It is not surprising that such a change in her position
should be reflected in the coinage.
The type of Sex. Pompeius Fostlus, on the other
hand, is one of those personal types which began to
appear once it was felt that change in the reverse type
of the denarius was permissible. The process is
characteristic of Roman historical development: first,
complete uniformity ; then the beginnings of change,
1 Germ. 5 : pecuniam probant veterem et diu notam, serratos bigatosque.
The serrati are the coins with notched, or serrated edges, regarding
which see No. 47.
60