By the time this denarius left the Rome mint in 67 or 68, Nero was performing in Greek theatres while his governors quietly counted their legions. The reverse, Roma seated on a cuirass with one foot planted on a helmet, Victory balanced on her outstretched palm, parazonium tucked at her side, shields stacked behind her, is the visual grammar of a state at the height of its power: martial, victorious, immovable. The legend, broken simply as RO-MA across the field, needs no further argument. The argument is the problem.
RIC I 70 belongs to the reformed denarius of 64, lighter and slightly debased, the silver coinage of an emperor who had rebuilt the city after the fire, looted its temples to pay for the rebuilding, and was now touring Achaea collecting crowns for his lyre playing while Vindex stirred in Gaul and Galba waited in Spain. Roma triumphant, struck for a princeps who would be declared a public enemy by the Senate within months and would open his own throat in a freedman's villa outside the walls she personifies. The cuirass she sits on was, in a sense, already empty.
- Mint
- Rome
- Struck
- AD 67-68
- Authority
- Nero
- Reverse
- Roma seated left on a cuirass with right foot on a helmet, holding Victory in outstretched right hand and parazonium in left hand, with round and oblong shields behind