In this series of videos, we’ll be looking at coins as evidence for the historian. You’re
probably quite used to looking at textual evidence, be they histories or poetries, written
sources. But material culture is equally important for the historian trying to understand the
key issues of the Late Republic. Coins are a particularly useful tool for any historian
trying to understand the political history of Rome. Coins are a tangible medium, small
and transportable, that pass through many hands. And because of this, they were the
ideal tool for the Roman politicians to disseminate information to the Roman public.
Before we look at some coins in more detail, I’d like to give you some information to
help you understand how historians, and in particular, numismatists (and those are people
who study coins for a living), talk about coins. Nowadays we tend to refer to the head
side of a coin, and then the tail side of the coin. In numismatics, the head side is
referred to as the obverse, and the tail side, the reverse, and I’ll use those terms in
this video. The writing on the coin is referred to as the legend, and this is also important
because a lot of information is conveyed in the legend on Roman coins. As well as the
iconography, the visual images that we see on them.
In this video, we’ll be exploring some of the coins of Sulla, who was an important political
and military figure in the Late Republic, from 88 BC onwards. This first coin of Sulla
was minted between 84 and 83 BC. On the obverse side of the coin we see a female head adorned
with jewellery, this is the goddess Venus. To the right of her is a smaller figure carrying
a palm branch, this is her son Cupid. Underneath the image we have written, the legend, Lucius
Sulla. Now Sulla took Venus as his patron deity, in fact he gave himself a new surname,
Felix, which means ‘lucky’, in honour of her. On the reverse side of the coin we
see several images. Now it might be quite hard to make out, but I’ll walk you through
it. On the outside we have two trophies, these are monuments created from the spoils and
weapons of the opponents. So you might be able to make out a helmet, a shield, a sword,
and possible even some leg greaves. But we’ll look at the trophy in more detail in a moment.
Between the two trophies is a jug, and what is called a lituus, or an augur’s staff,
an augur was a Roman priest. At the top and bottom of the image is the legend Imperator
Iterum, ‘Imperator for the second time’. This means Sulla has been declared victorious
general by his troops for a second time. But who has Sulla been victorious over? Which
battles do the trophies commemorate? Let’s look at some more coins in detail to understand
a bit more the iconography and imagery of this coin, and what a Roman audience would
understand from it.
So here you see the coin we’ve already been looking at, the coin of Lucius Sulla, minted
between 84 and 83 BC. Alongside this is a much earlier coin from 211 BC, this is a Victoriatus,
so named because on the reverse side we see a Victory, a winged female figure, crowning
a Roman trophy with a wreath. And actually on this coin it’s perhaps a lot easier to
see the trophy than it is on the coin of Sulla. You can quite clearly see the round shield,
the helmet with the crest on top, a long spear, and the skirt of the tunic. This was a very
common sign for the Romans, a means of designating victory over their opponents. Below this,
is a coin minted in 135 BC. Now there’s quite a lot of imagery on this coin. But what
I’d like you to pay attention to is the figure standing on the right-hand side of
the reverse coin. You should be able to see a figure who is wearing a toga, with the hood
of his toga pulled up. And he’s holding a lituus, just like the lituus on the Sulla
coin. This man is an augur, a priest. So looking at these coins together we can see that Sulla’s
coin is using imagery that a Roman audience would be well familiar with. He’s combining
trophies that signify his victory, with the lituus of an augur, and also the jug, which
is a sacrificial object used by the Pontiffs, another group of priests, to signify the legal
authority he has to conduct his campaigns. So on this coin we can see that Sulla is celebrating
victory, he’s got the support of the goddess Venus, and he’s also making reference to
Roman priestly offices, the augurs, who took the auspices, which allowed Roman generals
to go out on campaign, and that’s represented by the lituus, and the jug, another ritual
implement used by the Pontiffs, another group of Roman priests.
Now as consul in 88 BC, Sulla received imperium and auspices for the Mithridatic command,
the war against Mithridates. And this had been assigned to him by lot. However, Marius
had used the Tribune of the Plebs, to have the command transferred to him, this provoked
the civil war between Marius and Sulla. Having marched on Rome, to declare his legitimacy,
Sulla then went East. Between 87 and 86 BC, Marius and another Roman politician Cinna,
fought against Sulla and reversed his laws, presumably including the Law that Sulla had
used to reverse Sulpicius’ law, giving Marius the command, and thereby making Sulla’s
command illegitimate. So in 84 BC, Sulla was victorious over Mithridates, and returned
to Rome. Now whilst he encountered more internal political conflicts with his opponents, with
his coin he is affirming not only his victory, but his legal right to have command. That’s
what the lituus and the jug are saying, that my command against Mithridates was legitimate,
I had legal authority, I had imperium, I had auspices.
Victory, and military success, was clearly very important to Sulla, and he advertised
this heavily on his coinage. This next coin we see was minted only a year after the first
one. This is a denarius from 82 BC, on the obverse we see the helmeted head of the goddess
Roma. On the reverse, is a scene where we see four horses pulling a quadriga, a chariot,
with a figure inside the chariot, overhead flies a winged Victory, holding out a wreath
to crown the individual in the chariot. This is a scene of triumph. The quadriga, the four-horse
chariot, was a vehicle specific to the Roman triumph, a victory celebration where a general
paraded through the city of Rome, up to the Capitoline, and deposited his victory laurels
in the lap of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.
On this coin, we can see the four-horse chariot, the triumphator, the victorious general being
crowned by Victory, and underneath this scene we see the legend, Lucius Sulla Imperator.
Once again Sulla is confirming his victorious achievements, but this time with the specific
ritual of the Triumph. Sulla, in fact, celebrated two triumphs in 81, the year after this coin
was minted. One against Mithridates, and the other against Marius’ young son and the
Samnites, the community in Southern Italy. Although this coin was minted the year before
the Triumphs, it seems to be advertising and promoting the ceremonies to come, reminding
the people of Sulla’s successes in a year when he was about to become Dictator. This
coin of Sulla clearly shows that it was important for his to advertise his triumph to the Roman
people, because the triumph lasted only one day. It was ephemeral, so how did you maintain
the memory of the triumph? How did you get people excited about it beforehand? Well,
as Sulla did, you could use coins. But he wasn’t the first Roman to use a coin to
promote his military success, and particularly, his triumph.
Here we see a number of coins depicting the quadriga, the four-horse chariot. The one
at the very top dates to the mid third century BC. This is a Quadrigatus, so named because
of the quadriga depicted on it. I wanted to show you this coin because it depicts Jupiter,
the king of the gods, riding a chariot. In the third and second centuries BC, it was
very common to see a quadriga on coinage, but it was always a deity, always a god, riding
in the chariot. However, from 101 BC we start to see it change. The coin from 101 BC here,
celebrates the triumph of Marius, who had been victorious over the Germanic tribes who
had tried to invade Northern Italy. On this coin we see the four-horse chariot, Marius
as triumphator in the chariot, and a small figure riding the trace horse, this we assume
is Marius’ young son, he was awarded the privilege of riding in his father’s triumph.
So we can see with Marius’ coin of 101, that now we get living Romans depicting their
triumph on the coins, not just the gods. This trend begins to gain traction over the course
of the first century BC. The next coin from 83 BC depicts a triumph. It is uncertain who
is the triumphator, but given the date of the coin, 83, during the civil war between
Sulla and his opponents, this coin might in fact be portending, a hope for triumph and
an end of civil war. Next we see the coin that we’ve already studied, the coin of
Sulla, celebrating, or in fact advertising, his two triumphs of 81. This coin is followed
by a golden coin, an aureus of Pompey, Pompey the Great. This is a striking coin not just
because it’s gold, this is a coin that Pompey is using to advertise his triumph as he returns
victorious from Spain. Once again we see the triumphator in his chariot, and underneath
the legend PRO-COS, Pro Consul. This is because Pompey was returning from Spain, having had
Pro-Consular power in his command against Sertorius. The final coin depicts not a Roman
general, but Victory herself, the winged figure holding out a wreath, riding the quadriga.
I wanted to show this coin because it comes from 46, another period of civil war. So here
we have again the idea of the Triumph, the idea of Victory as being crucial and central,
but during a time when Romans were fighting Romans.
So let’s return to this coin of Sulla. We can see now the importance of the Triumph
to him as an individual, to advertise it before it happens, to promote his military success
to the Roman public. But we can also see this coin as part of a longer, and ongoing tradition,
highlighting the importance of the triumph as a symbol of military success to Roman generals.