A few examples will illustrate these tendencies. Sex. Pompeius Fostlus strikes a reverse, showing his ancestor Faustulus, the shepherd, finding the twins, Romulus and Remus, with the she wolf ; he probably strikes in the days of Tiberius Gracchus, when the thought of Roma Renascens, the "re-birth of Rome" was in men's minds—hence an appropriateness in the reference to her origins.
A group of moneyers of the year 118 B.C. issuing coins for the new colony of Narbo in Gaul, put on their reverses a Gallic warrior, probably Bituitus, king of the Arverni, in his war-chariot: in this case the public interest in Gaul has displaced any personal references. L. Tiburius Sabinus, striking c. 87 B.C., refers to the legendary Sabine king, Talicus, and to the rape of the Sabine women : the parallel between Rome's troubles with her neighbours in the past and in the present was obvious to all. Sulla, in the East, struck gold coins, with obverse types of Venus, whose favourite he claimed to be : later, in Rome itself, he commemo rates his own triumph. Pompey the Great, perhaps in 61 B.C., struck a similar coin in honour of his Eastern victories, with a glance too at Africa, where his career of triumph had begun. The twenty years from 70 to so B.C. yield a host of references to his tory. M. Lepidus, probably the man who was afterwards tri umvir with Octavian and Antony, has a gallery of family types, celebrating an earlier Lepidus, who at the age of 15 killed an enemy and saved a fellow-countryman in battle; the Marius Lepidus, who was sent to Alexandria to be tutor to King Ptolemy V. of Egypt in 200; the vestal virgin Aemilia, for whom Vesta miraculously rekindled the sacred fire ; the Lepidus who restored the Basilica Aemilia and hung it with shields in 78 B.C. A. P. Hypsicus goes back still further to Neptune and his daughter, Leucronoe, the origin of his line.
With the outbreak of the great Civil War, the personal element burst out into full prominence. The coinage of Julius Caesar from the first bears the stamp of his personality and in the last year of his life the senate authorized him to place his portrait on the coins. Hitherto, the obverse of the coins had been considered the prerogative of a god or goddess: at the most, room might be made there for a hero of early days, such as Scipio Africanus. Caesar's own generation had begun to engrave the portraits of its fathers and now, at last, the portrait of the living man appears. Rome had come back to the monarchy, by whatever name she might call it. From this point to the end of the Republic, we have no true Republican coinage but only the preparations for the Imperial. Even the murderers of the tyrant Caesar in their last struggle for the Republic in the East, placed their own por traits on their coins. Brutus, on one famous reverse, set the dag
gers that had stabbed Caesar, with the comment EID. MAR. (the fatal Ides of March). Antony strikes in the East associating with himself first his wife in Rome, Octavia, later his Egyptian enchantress, Cleopatra. For his army and navy before the battle of Actium, he strikes denarii with the eagle and standards and prow on the reverse. Sextus Pompey, the pirate son of Pompey the Great, celebrates his chief naval victory over Octavian by a coin showing him as "son of Neptune"—proud title of a success f ul admiral.
The Roman bronze coinage never outgrew its conventional types. It grew t6 importance in the First Punic War, when the reverse represented the prow, the sign of sea power, the obverses the great gods of the state. These types it kept throughout : the ordinary Latin word for the "tail" of a coin is "navis" (ship). Augustus.—The Empire, founded by Augustus, has a dual aspect ; on the one side it is a monarchy, based on the support of the troops; on the other it is simply an exalted magistracy of the Roman Republic, created with special powers to deal with special problems. The imperial coinage faithfully mirrors this duality. The Emperor, as paymaster of the soldiers, keeps in his own hands the issue of the precious metals; but he leaves to the senate, now the one representative of the Roman people, the right of issuing the token coinage of brass and copper. The mint of the senate is naturally ih Rome itself. The imperial mint is early centralised in the same place, but it is important to note that Augustus began by striking his money for the troops in the provinces, continuing the practice of the generals of the late Republic. His mint was not the successor of the senatorial, but a new creation of his own. It was probably Caligula who opened the first mint in the capital. Henceforth gold and silver was normally struck in Rome. Provincial issues occur freely in times of civil war, but hardly to any extent otherwise. It was only in the 3rd century that a number of provincial mints came into being, to meet the needs of the chief armies, Antioch in Syria among the first. The example once given soon spread. By the time of Gallienus, imperial coins were struck in Viminacium, Siscia, Lugdunum, Mediolanum—perhaps at other mints too— as well as at Rome and Antioch ; and from Aurelian on, the principle of the local issue of imperial coins is dominant. The senate struck mainly in Rome—at first only for Rome and Italy. The mark S.C., "senatus consulto," attests its authority. Antioch in the East and Lugdunum in Gaul also issue coins with this mark, which we must regard as also issued under senatorial authority.