Coins As Great Storytellers by Oliver Turney

I will not pretend that everybody loves coins. It’s true – not everyone will spend the majority of their visit to a museum peering through the glass at some tiny circular discs of copper, silver or gold, whose miniscule inscriptions are barely visible to the human eye from close up, let alone from behind the glass! However, don’t be too quick to dismiss these coins: in bypassing them on your trip around the museum, you may be missing out on a truly fascinating story.

The Roman coins on display in the museum, all found in and around Cirencester, offer us a glimpse into the past and you can see for yourself the faces of the emperors. Now, that may not seem too exciting but wait just a minute – the faces you see on those coins were the faces of the most powerful men in the known Western world, their empires stretching from Britain to North Africa, from Spain to Turkey, and you are getting the chance to look upon their faces, these people who died around two THOUSAND years ago! Now, maybe I’m just of an unusual disposition, but that gives me goosebumps!

However, the faces you see on these coins are the versions that the emperors would have wanted to project to the masses: we have Augustus, whose face on a coin from around AD 11 looks to be that of a rather impressive young adult, whereas in reality, he was, at that time, 74 years of age! Or the emperor Nero, with his pure opulence oozing from the image of his huge face on a coin found from his reign because, well, a person of great size was looked upon to be a person of wealth and extravagance, being able to eat excessively and live in luxury (with the ancient sources telling us of Nero’s extravagant dinner parties, the building of his “Golden House” and his general love of wealth), which is beautifully shown here on his coin. These are the images that the emperors wanted to spread around their empire: people in, for example, Egypt may never have seen the emperor, but they can look upon his face by just picking a coin out of their pocket. Whether this was an accurate portrait of the emperor is another matter, but if not, it is certainly indicative of the way an emperor wanted to be viewed, which in itself is fascinating! So, these coins were effectively propaganda pieces for the emperors, to be spread all across the empire.

Emperor Nero coin

Now, back to Augustus, who I mentioned earlier. Though it seems that on his coins he escaped the inevitability of aging, this may be for other reasons than just airbrushing his wrinkles (yes, it seems Photoshopping your image is an age-old occurrence, and not just here in the age of Instagram and influencers!). If you can focus your eyes on the tiny inscription around his face, you will just about be able to make out the letters: DIV FIL. Now, what does that mean? Well, those six letters tell the viewer that the face they are looking upon, is that of the Son of a God. Yes – Augustus’ adoptive father was the Deified Julius Caesar. Augustus used his adoptive father’s legacy as a god in order to legitimise his own rule. This is not as far-fetched as it seems: you have to remember that the Romans were a very pious people – praying to the gods, building temples to the gods and, in Augustus’ case, even claiming descent from the gods. So, the gods played a very central role in the everyday lives of the Romans and Augustus used this to his advantage. He himself was also deified after his death – no wonder he didn’t age on his coins!

Augustus coin

Coins, as well as having this political context behind them – Augustus took power after a century of civil wars and power-grabbing by mighty generals so needed to cement his place at the top – had other purposes. A coin of the emperor Gallienus, from the 3rd century AD, bears an image of the emperor on the obverse (front) and on the reverse we can see a picture of a stag with the words DIANAE CONS AVG. This is the emperor linking himself with this goddess, Diana, whose symbol is a stag, naming her as the protector of the emperor. At the time civil war was a big problem and conflicts were raging all across the empire, so Gallienus calls upon Diana, and many other deities, to protect him. Gallienus managed to struggle through the “Crisis of the Third Century,” at a time when the empire nearly crumbled, and his 15 years as emperor was the longest reign for half a century! Perhaps invoking the gods helped him survive for so long – though it didn’t stop him from being assassinated!

Gallienus coin