Ancient Roman Silver Coin

What I got here is a Roman silver denarius from 155-156 AD featuring Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

I've been wanting to show this properly for a while now. I got this for myself as a Christmas present and as a sort symbolic acknowledgment for a new task I was about to take. There is some responsibility to it and I had some concerns about dealing with all that came with it, so I sought some inspiration from stoics texts; first most, the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius that a friend of mine had mentioned some years back. Before you ask; Nope, I wasn’t crowned the emperor of the artist association here, I'm just paying the bills and doing a lot of the boring stuff that needs to get done to keep things rolling. I just like to make a fuss sometimes.

As I was listening and the words resonated with me, I got the idea to search Ebay for ancient roman coins and specifically of Marcus Aurelius. Turns out there were quite a lot of them and they seemed somewhat expensive for me, also a lot of them seemed quite worn out. This one caught my eye because; it had a lot of the details left with a great looking patina. There are some green patches from corrosion which was a little worrying and the coin is bent and cracked on the face and on the edges. So it definitely had some serious flaws to it but I thought they gave it character. I stalked the auction till the last minute and made my bid and got it for a decent price. It's quite something to hold a nearly 2000 years old piece of history and art in your hands, such a tiny thing too with so much behind it.

Let’s study the coin. The obverse has the profile of Marcus Aurelius with the text:

AVRELIVS CAES ANTON AVG PII F
Aurelius Caesar, son of Antoninus Augustus Pius

The coin dates to 155-156 AD, while Aurelius was the Emperor from 161 to 180 AD. As I understand he is like the emperor in training though doing a lot of the ruling at this point and his adoptive father Antonius Pius is the acting emperor. Aurelius would become co-emperors with his step brother Lucius Verus 161, until Verus’s death in 169 AD.

The crack is quite noticeable below his neck

The reverse has the image of Aequitas*, Equity, holding a scepter and scales.

TR POT X COS II parts are missing so had to look it up
Tribunicia Potestate X – held the tribunitian power 10 times
Consul Secundum – consul for the second time

I only realized this today. I thought it was Virtus at first, as I was focused on the scepter when I was looking for more details before and guess I had just ignored the title in the purchase that clearly stated AEQUITAS. I guess it makes it a little less romantic symbolism but perhaps more interesting in its ambivalency, as equity could point to few different things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aequitas

It is quite small. The box is a bit too big for it, so I try to handle it with care till I get a better storage for it.

Thanks for checking out my post, I hope you enjoyed it. I am not a historian or numismatic expert, just learning things as I go. If you find a mistake, please correct me. I will drop some links here if you are interested.

There is a good page on Marcus Aurelius on Wikipedia of course
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius

Here is link to the audiobook by librivox of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, should come up in search of your podcast app.
https://librivox.org/the-meditations-of-marcus-aurelius/

I used this site for identification. Here are the coins with Marcus Aurelius
http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/ric/marcus_aurelius/i.html

This is good resource for those latin abbreviations
http://www.forumancientcoins.com/NumisWiki/view.asp

Pictures taken with Lumia 1020 with a cheap macro lens. I finally got that new data cable for my phone, yay!