This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ From republic to principate change and continuity in Roman coinage Gyori, Victoria Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. 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FROM REPUBLIC TO PRINCIPATE: CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN ROMAN COINAGE Victoria Monica Gyori King’s College London Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) © Victoria Monica Gyori I, the undersigned, do hereby declare that the following research is my own work and that the information is properly referenced and presented. Victoria Monica Gyori 1 ABSTRACT My thesis analyses the changes which occurred in the coinage of Rome from the mid-first century BC to the succession of Tiberius in AD 14 and investigates how they can contribute to our understanding of the nature and chronology of the formation of the Principate. The first chapter discusses methodological problems. I argue that the current organization and classification of Roman coinage - especially the treatment of all post- 31/27 BC coins as “imperial” - have prejudged and obscured the value of coinage as evidence for this transition. The second chapter examines the Octavianic CAESAR DIVI F(ilius) and IMP(erator) CAESAR series of c. 32-27 BC. I argue these coins should be seen in a “Hellenistic monarchic” tradition following the Late Republican debt to Hellenistic artistic media. The third chapter and the fourth chapter focus on coins minted at Rome and in Spain from 23 BC to 16 BC. I argue that while many of these coins still employ numerous Late Republican Hellenising motifs, they also introduce novel elements into the typological inventory of Roman coinage, such as “honorific” and “anticipatory” issues, as well as a boom in the use of explanatory legends. The fifth chapter explores the dramatic shift in “familial” coin typology from the “ancestral” references in the Republic to portrayal of living members of the domus Augusti. The domus Augusti is the one numismatic theme that is found both on Augustan “mainstream” and “provincial” coins, and it seems that these types were first developed on the “provincial” coins. 2 Overall, I conclude that these developments were not unilinear: there had been a general trend starting in the late Republic to adopt “Hellenistic monarchic” elements on Roman coins, while Tiberian coins of the end of Augustus’ reign still have strong “Republican” elements. I argue, however, that, after a ‘false start’ before 27 BC, the decisive shift towards “monarchic” typology occurred after 19 BC. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ............................................................................................ 6 INTRODUCTION – FROM REPUBLIC TO PRINCIPATE: COINS AND HISTORY Introduction 1 – The Historical Question ........................................................ 7 Introduction 2 – Plan of the Thesis .................................................................. 12 CHAPTER 1 – THE PROBLEMS OF CLASSIFICATION 1.1 – The Distinction between “Imperial” and “Republican” Coinage .. 14 1.2 – The Distinction in the Principate between “Imperial” and “Senatorial” Coinage ................................................................................................... 15 1.3 – The Distinction between “Imperial”/”Senatorial” and “Provincial” Coinage ................................................................................................... 18 1.4 –“Imperatorial” Coinage ................................................................... 19 1.5 – The Distinction between “Imperial” and “State” Coinage, and “Provincial” and “Regional” Coinage ......................................................................... 22 1.6 – Other Means of Classification ....................................................... 23 1.7 – New Criteria for Cataloguing and Classification........................... 27 CHAPTER 2 – OCTAVIAN’S COINS OF C. 32-27 BC 2.1 – Introduction.................................................................................... 37 2.2 – The CAESAR DIVI F(ilius) and IMP(erator) CAESAR Coins and their Date and Mint .................................................................................................. 40 2.3 – The Significance of Octavian’s Coins of c. 32-27 BC .................. 43 2.3.1 - Legends and Obverse and Reverse Types without Images of Octavian .................................................................................................. 45 2.3.2 – Obverse and Reverse Types with Images of Octavian... ............ 54 2.4 – Conclusions ................................................................................... 74 CHAPTER 3 – THE ROMAN MINT OF 23-12 BC 3.1 – Introduction.................................................................................... 76 3.2 – The Augustus/Numa Asses of 23 BC............................................. 77 3.2.1- Numa and Romulus ...................................................................... 82 3.2.2 – “Ancestral Portrait” Coin Types and the Legendary Kings of Rome ....................................................................................................... 85 3.2.3 – Augustus and Numa .................................................................... 88 3.2.4 –The Secular Games of 23 BC and Book 6 of the Aeneid............. 90 3.3 – The Aurei and Denarii of 19 BC... ................................................ 93 4 3.4 – The Ludi Saeculares and the Golden Age ..................................... 99 3.5 – The Increase in Legends and “Honorific” Types (19-16 BC) ....... 106 3.6 – Other Developments to 12 BC ....................................................... 115 3.7 – Conclusions ................................................................................... 118 CHAPTER 4 – THE MARS ULTOR COINS OF C. 19-16 BC 4.1 – Introduction.................................................................................... 120 4.2 – The Mars Ultor Coins and their Mints and Date ........................... 125 4.3 – Architectura Numismatica ............................................................. 129 4.4 – The Significance of the Mars Ultor Coins ..................................... 132 4.4.1 – Mars not on the Capitol .............................................................. 134 4.4.2 – Alternate Explanation: The Circular Form of the Temple Structures ................................................................................................ 136 4.5 – “Anticipatory” Types ..................................................................... 147 4.6 – Conclusions ................................................................................... 150 CHAPTER 5 – FROM ARISTOCRATIC LEADERS TO IMPERIAL DYNASTY 5.1 – Introduction.................................................................................... 152 5.2 – The End of the “Familial” Type: 44-12 BC................................... 153 5.3 – “Dynastic” Types ........................................................................... 155 5.4 – The Augustan Family