By the time this denarius left the Rome mint around AD 64 or 65, Nero had been emperor for a decade and the city itself had just burned. The reverse offers Roma in full martial drag, seated on a cuirass with one foot planted on a discarded helmet, Victory in her outstretched hand and a *parazonium* (the short ceremonial blade of a general) tucked at her side. It is the iconography of a state at war, and indeed Corbulo's eastern campaigns against Parthia and Armenia were grinding toward the diplomatic settlement of 66, when Tiridates would come to Rome and kneel before Nero in the Forum.
Yet the laureate profile on the obverse already shows the thickening jaw and heavy neck that the dies of these years record with almost cruel honesty: this is the Nero of the post-reform coinage, the emperor who had just lightened the denarius and tightened its fineness, who was rebuilding a scorched capital around his Domus Aurea, and who was three or four years from a knife in the throat at Phaon's villa. Roma sits on her cuirass and promises victory. The promise was kept, briefly, and then the dynasty that Augustus had built ran out of heirs.
- Mint
- Rome
- Struck
- Struck circa AD 64-65
- Authority
- Nero
- Reverse
- Roma seated left on a cuirass, holding Victory and parazonium, with foot on helmet