Concordia, the goddess of harmony, sits placidly on this denarius struck around AD 64 to 65, holding her patera and cornucopia as if Rome were the most settled place on earth. The timing is the point. These years bracket the Great Fire of July 64, the rumors that Nero himself had lit it, the scapegoating and gruesome execution of Christians in the imperial gardens, and the first stirrings of the conspiracy that Piso and his circle would set in motion in 65.
They also coincide with Nero's sweeping reform of the coinage, which lightened the denarius and reduced its silver fineness, the very piece on which Concordia now advertised her blessings. The reform would outlast him; the harmony would not. To pay a soldier or a creditor with this coin in 65 was to hand over a smaller promise wrapped in a larger one, and within three years the emperor who minted it would open his own throat in a freedman's villa outside the city.
- Mint
- Rome
- Struck
- circa AD 64-65
- Authority
- Nero
- Reverse
- shows Concordia seated left, holding a patera and cornucopia