of a Roman matron, standing in the middle of a field, and holding in each hand an ensign, from which are suspended small bucklers. It has the legend FIDES MILITVM, "the fidelity of the soldiers.”

Coins exist of this period bearing a female portrait with beautiful features, and the inscription, DIVAE MARINIANAE. She wears a veil, the type of deification. These are evidently the coins struck after her death, at the time of her consecration. She is supposed to have been the wife of Valerian. The reverse is a peacock, with, CONSECRATIO.

GALLIENUS, FROM 263 TO 268 A.D.

The degenerate son of Valerian was associated with his father in the empire on his accession, and he became sole emperor in 263. On his first accession to this dignity he gained several important victories over the Goths, Alemanni, Franks, and Burgundians, but soon after showed himself unequal to the difficult task of repressing the increasing hordes of barbarians, and was assassinated in 268 A.D.

There exist abundant examples of the profuse coinage of this reign, of every class. On account of the continuance of the fearful pestilence, all the deities of the Pantheon were invoked, and an incredible quantity of denarii and assaria were struck in honour of Jupiter, Apollo, Esculapius, Hercules, Janus, &c., &c. Gallienus also restored the consecrationary coins of Augustus, Vespasian, Titus, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Aurelius, Severus and Alexander, but they were struck in base metal, on billon, as it is sometimes termed. A great number of different animals are found on the small brass series of this reign, being such as were sacred to the various divinities sought to be propitiated on account of the pestilence.

The specimen of the large brass described below is of a peculiar class; and not having the usual S C, is supposed to have been struck by the independent order of the emperor, on some alterations being effected in the administration of the mint. The symbols used, a divine superintendence of the mint, are not altogether appropriate, when it is considered that the debasement of the purity of the coinage was carried to a shameful extent in this reign.

The obverse has a head of Gallienus, with his name and the titles IMP(erator) GALLIENVS P(ius) F(elix) AVG(ustus). The reverse bears three figures, apparently deities of the mint, with a cornucopia, to signify that money supplies everything, and scales to denote that equity is required in money transactions. At the feet of each of these three figures is a lump of the respective metals, gold, silver, and brass. It has the inscription MONETA. AVGG(ustorum), the money of the Augustus's.'

There are coins in honour of Cornelia Salonina, the wife of Gallienus, and also of his son, Publius Licinius Cornelius Saloninus Valerianus Gallienus. The inscriptions on the latter coins stand, P(ublius) C(ornelius) S(aloninus) VALERIANVS CAES (ar). He was murdered by the revolted legions at Colonia Agrippina. The coins struck after his death have on the reverse a stately rogus, or mausoleum, of five stories, surmounted by a quadriga bearing a statue of the deceased prince, and the usual legend CONSECRATIO.

With the reign of Gallienus the noble series of Roman sestertii, or coinage of the class termed by collectors "first bronze," ceases, as does also, with few exceptions, the colonial and Greek Imperial mintage; while the Egyptian series struck in Alexandria continue still in billon, or debased silver. Indeed, the series of Roman coins as a succession of works of monetary art may be said to cease with the reign of Gallienus, and I shall therefore treat the remainder of the series very briefly. Historians have already agreed to establish a grand division upon this epoch, the subsequent existence of Roman power in the West being termed the lower empire.

THE THIRTY TYRANTS.

Between the great dramas of the upper and lower empire, a pausing place or interregnum is formed by a period of confusion immediately preceding and following the death of Gallienus. Almost every leader of a provincial army declared himself independent, and exercising supreme power in his own province, aimed at extending it over the whole empire. These pretenders have been termed the Thirty Tyrants, though only nineteen can be enumerated. They may be classed numerically as those of whom coins are known o

undoubted genuineness, those whose coins are doubtful, and those of whom no coins are known, which is the method Captain Smith has adopted for dismissing the subject briefly in his excellent catalogue.

Among these may be classed also Odenathus, husband of Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, whose bravery prevented the Persians from subduing the whole of the Roman empire in the East, and who, but for his base assassination, would have completely humbled that barbaric power, the then most formidable enemy of Rome. Coins of Odenathus, as well as Zenobia, exist, though somewhat rare.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE ROMAN COINAGE.

COINS OF THE LOWER EMPIRE, FROM THE REIGN OF CLAUDIUS GOTHICUS (268 A.D.) TO THE DISSOLUTION OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE UNDER ROMULUS AUGUSTULUS (476 a.d.); WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE MONEY CIRCULATING IN ITALY AFTER THAT EPOCH, AND A SKETCH OF THE COINAGE OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE TILL ITS DISSOLUTION.

AFTER the period of confusion which, following the capture of Valerianus by Sapor King of Persia, lasted till some time after the death of his son Gallienus, such was the apparent tendency to dismemberment in all the extremities

of the paralysed empire, that its immediate fall appeared inevitable, when, as though called into existence by the urgency of the occasion, a succession of such men as Claudius Gothicus, Aurelianus Tacitus and Probus appeared, who, by vast energy and talent, cemented the crumbling fragments, and gave such renewed vigour to the whole political system, that the prestige of the Roman name was, for a time, re-established on all the wide-spread frontiers of the empire, which, thus invigorated, endured in nearly all its integrity for two centuries longer. Claudius Gothicus first restored order, and drove back the presumptuous and daring barbarians along the whole northern and western frontier; while his successor undertook the wellknown expedition to the East, by which the suddenly acquired power of the Queen of Palmyra was crushed, and the eastern frontier of the Roman world reconquered, and in some respects extended.

But the ancient glory of the coinage was never restored; art never revived in the Roman world (unless the Byzantine style may be called a partial revival). The coinage under Claudius Gothicus, who never recovered Spain and Gaul from Tetricus, is not remarkable, but the money of billon, a mixture of tin and silver, disappeared, and was replaced by copper silvered over, or plated. The bronze coinage is confined to the second and lesser bronze, and not remarkable. The best examples of the monetary art of this reign. are medallions, which do not come within the scope of this work.

In the reign of Aurelianus, the celebrated revolt of the workmen of the mint took place at Rome. To these artisans and their officers, who probably took advantage of the public troubles to defraud the mint, the Roman empire was perhaps indebted, more than to the government, for the debased coin which had been put forth since Septimus Severus, when the standard first began to decline. Upon the attempt of Aurelian, who was active and determined in every department of reform, to remove the abuses of the vast establishment which had coined the money of the whole civilised world, the entire body of moneyers, headed by Felicissimus, one of their officers, took up arms to defend with their lives the abuses upon

which they had thriven so long at the expense of their fellow-citizens. Their numbers must have been very great, as seven thousand soldiers are said to have perished before the rebels were subdued.

examples of the

His portrait is since the time of

The gold coins of Aurelius are good hard and peculiar style of the period. clad in the mail armour become general Gallienus. The radiated crown of the East also became general in the late reigns.

Tacitus, Florianus, Probus, Carus, Carinus, Numerianus, Dioclesianus, and Maximianus; Galerius, Valerius Maximus, Constantius Chlorus, the father of Constantine the Great, and the independent emperors of Britain, Carausius, and Allectus, occupy the time between the years 275 and 305 A.D., and the coinage offers no important features which require dwelling upon in a work of this nature. Some of the coins are, however, of interesting character, especially those of the profuse coinage of Probus for instance, on which he appears with his empress, one profile over the other, and with the three figures referring to the coinage on the reverse, similar to the type described on the coins of Gallienus. The varieties of type on the coins of Probus may be reckoned by hundreds.

A coin of Maximianus Herculeanus, the colleague of Dioclesian, is remarkable as exhibiting the emperor in a lion skin head-dress, after the manner of the coins of Alexander the Great. On the reverse of this coin the two emperors appear in the characters of the surnames they had assumed, Dioclesian as Jupiter, and Maximian as Hercules, with the inscription, MONETA JOVI ET HERCULIS AUGG, money of the Jovian and Herculean Augustus's." The second G denoting the plural.

On the coins of the subordinate Cæsars, appointed by Dioclesian, the inscriptions have a character new to the Roman coinage. On those of Valerius Severus, for instance, the title assumed is, SEVERUS NOBILIS CAESAR, (the noble Severus Cæsar), and on the reverse VIRTUS AUGUSTORUM ET CÆSARUM NOSTRUM, (the virtue of our Augustus's and Cæsars), expressing the difference between the supreme power of the Augustus's, and the limited power of the Cæsars, by the precedence given to the title "Augustus."