And if indeed some of the restored types have not been preserved to our day, that ought to be ascribed to the smallness of the number restruck.

In fact several of the types which have been preserved to us are only known to us by one single specimen.

What wonder therefore that no specimen of others should have been preserved.

263. The Restitution coins in Bronze are rare in regard to some Emperors and Empresses, but generally they may be considered as common coins. Those in gold and silver on the other hand are always rare, (with one exception, viz, that of the silver coin of LEG VI of M. Antony restruck by M. Aurelius and L. Verus), and some of them are very rare being valued at from £10 to £ 25. Restored Medallions are unknown.

264. It will not be out of place to give here the remarks promised in the preceding chapter concerning the arrangement or classification of the Restitution or Posthumous coins as they may be called from a more general point of view. Usually and from old custom these coins are placed under the name and reign of the ruler they commemorate and whose portrait they bear, whereas it would be more reasonable to place them under the name and reign of the ruler who commemorated them and ordered the striking of the coins in question.

For example, in all catalogues we see registered immediately fol lowing the coins of Augustus not only those struck during the reign of Tiberius in simple memory of the deceased Emperor but also the coins of Augustus restored by the Emperors Titus, Domitian, Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian.

But these are not really coins of Augustus but rather coins of Tiberius, Titus, Domitian, Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian, and it is to the several reigns of these Emperors that the coins should logically be ascribed.

Hence in fact the entire series of the Restitution coins of Trajan should be assigned to his reign and not to the individual names, whether Imperial or Republican, which were restored.

The old way of ascribing them constitutes just such an historical anachronism as would be made by attributing to Numa Pompilius the denarii of the Calpurnian gens or to Titus Tatius those of L. Titurius Sabinus because the heads of those Kings are represented on

their coins.

But this bad habit has become too inverate to be easily abandoned and considerable time will be needed to enable us to correct it.

CHAPTER XXXI

CONSECRATION COINS

265. Human pride has always been excessive but it reached its highest point when men desired to be considered divine. The rulers of the Roman world after having enjoyed the highest human honours soon desired to take unto themselves also these last and claimed their own deification, an honour which was decreed to Romulus by a people who in the earlier ages, though but little given to adulation, through excessive enthusiasm spoke of him exceptionally as the divine founder of the city: DIVO ROMVLO CONDITORI.

266. At the death of Julius Cæsar the popular exaltation and the execration of the detested assassination urged the people and the Senate to decree divine honours for him. Moreover the times were already changed and the republican severity was already influenced and made more lax by Greek customs; so much was this the case that Augustus was able a little later to claim the title DIVI FILIVS while he was yet living, and thus from the very beginning of the Empire to initiate the series of Deified Rulers.

This highest honour ought to have been reserved for the best of their rulers, but by degrees politics, convenience, party interests, and intrigues caused these divine honours to be decreed to rulers of far less worth and even to the very worst of Emperors.

Consecration was decreed by the Senate as we may see from the coins of certain Empresses on whose coins we read EX S.C. (Ex Senatus Consulto).

267. On the coins the ceremony of consecration is recorded by the simple word CONSECRATIO.

When the designer had to represent an Emperor or a Cæsar gathered among the gods he represented on the coins a rogus or funeral pile; often ornamented with statues, and the triumphal quadriga with which the pile was crowned, or a quadriga, or a chariot drawn by four elephants, or an eagle with wings outspread resting on a sceptre or a globe, or sometimes an eagle flying, or lastly a closed temple.

When on the other hand the apotheosis to be celebrated was that of an Empress a peacock took the place of the eagle or the type represented. Piety sacrificing at a tripod, or the Carpentum, the funeral car drawn by two mules, or the lectisternium, the seat of Juno, or the Empress herself being carried to heaven by an eagle. 268. The head of the deified person is generally represented bare, rarely veiled (Jul. Cæsar, Claudius Gothicus, and certain of his

successors), it is sometimes accompanied by a star, as for instance in the case of Julius Cæsar and Augustus.

The Empresses are generally veiled, except Livia, who is crowned with ears of corn after the model of Ceres. The legends are always in the dative case in the case of the Emperors (DIVO ANTONINO PIO); but the legends of the Empresses though often in the dative, are also sometimes in the nominative (DIVAE MARINIANAE, DIVA FAVSTINA)

269. From History we learn that as many as forty-seven personages among the Emperors, Caesars and Empresses had the honour of being admitted to the number of the gods after their death. The list begins with Julius Cæsar and ends with Constantine the Great, but we possess true consecration coins of only thirty Emperors, as we may see in the following list, from which it will appear that the Consecration coins begin at the time of Hadrian with those of Marciana and Matidia, and we shall see how much more commonly the Consecration coins were of silver, those of bronze coming next and, lastly, those of gold; all are fairly abundant except the medallions, which are extremely rare and all in Bronze, and these few, numbering only five in all, are each known by only one example.

270. It would not however be exactly true to say that those only are consecration coins which bear the types and legend CONSECRATIO.

There are many other coins which whilst they bear on the Obverse the head of the Emperor or Empress with the epithet DIVO or DIVA bear on the Reverse the Symbol of Consecration either with out any legend (as for instance the Aureus of Trajan

with the Phoenix or the Bronze Medallion of Faustina the mother, illustrated in fig. 76) or with some legend which refers to the apotheosis, as for example AETERNITATISIDERIBVS RECEPTA. (Faustina, the mother) AETERNAE MEMORIAE (Constantius Chlorus) and others.

All such coins may be held to be quite equivalent or almost similar to the Consecration Coins and if we take these into account the series of such coins extends to a much earlier period, even almost to that in which the ceremony was first introduced.

271. We have moreover a special series of Consecration Coins in base silver and of uniform type in honour of the Emperors Augustus, Vespasian, Titus, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius,