#trajan decius

Antoninianus minted in Rome in 250 AD/CE to mark the adventus (formal entry into the city) of the emperor Trajan Decius (r. 249-251). On the obverse, the bust of Decius, wearing a radiate crown; this crown, which connected the reigning emperor to the solar deity Helios/Sol, became increasingly common in Roman iconography during the later Empire and would continue to appear even after the "Christianization" of Rome. On the reverse, Decius on horseback, holding a scepter and wearing the traveling hat known as the petasus.

Decius came to the throne during the so-called Third Century Crisis -- a period of some fifty years, from the assassination of Severus Alexander to the accession of Diocletian, during which the Roman Empire grappled with civil wars, "barbarian" incursions, Sassanid Persian aggression, and severe inflation, among other troubles. Decius hoped to "right the ship" by restoring the worship of the traditional Roman gods, and he accordingly issued an edict commanding all citizens of the Empire to offer sacrifice. Those who did so received official certificates (libelli), while those who refused were subject to legal penalties such as exile and confiscation of property. In the event, many Christians simply bribed the officials in charge of certificates or paid others to sacrifice in their place, and the persecution fizzled out with Decius' death in battle the next year (an event Christians saw as divine retribution). Nonetheless, the Decian edict remains significant as the first known attempt to compel religious orthodoxy on an Empire-wide scale, and it set the mold for future, more aggressive persecutions under Valerian and Diocletian.

A potentially unique coin, a new Decius type…

Roman Province - Pisidia

AE24 - 7.94g

Trajan Decius 249-251 AD

Antioch Mint

Obverse IMP CAES C MESS Q DECIO TRA

Bust of Decius right, radiate, draped, cuirassed, from behind

Reverse ANTIOCH CE COLO S R

Vexillum with eagle, flanked by standards with eagles

And tell sad stories of the death of kings;

How some have been deposed; some slain in war,

Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;

Some poison’d by their wives: some sleeping kill’d;"

"All murder’d: for within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king

Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,

Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp."

Isaac II and Alexios III Angelos - Nemanjici: Radjanje kraljevine (2018)

Trajan Decius - Rome: Rise and Fall of an Empire (2008)

PISIDIA, Codrula. Trajan Decius 249-251 A.D. AE 35mm, 26.58g. Rhea facing Kronos

Time seems to have little meaning in these final days of the year. As I become one with the couch and start thinking about the work coming in the year ahead, I’m thinking of Kronos, the god of time, from which we get the English words chronology and chronological, etc. Saturn, as the Romans knew him, was a more benign god than his Greek counterpart, who was most famous for eating his own children to prevent one of them forcing him off his throne. Saturn, on the other hand, was entrusted with the state treasury and stood careful watch over the turning of the year. He was associated with Janus, the two-faced god, who gives us January, a month for looking both forward and backward, and kept the cosmos in order.

Trajan Decius is one of my favorite emperors. He reigned for only a little more than a year in the mid 3rd century CE, but issued tons of amazing and interesting coins, including this one, with Kronos and his wife Rhea, a goddess of the earth and maternity.