Empress SEVERINA Wife of Roman Emperor Aurelian Reign: (270-275 AD.) Antioch Mint AE Silvered Antoninianus Obverse: SEVERINA AVG, diademed, draped, bust of Severina on crescent, wearing Stephane facing right ... Reverse: CONCORDIAE MILITVM, Concordia, draped, standing left, holding ensign in each hand; T in right field, XXI in exergue.. Ref: RIC VII Trier 554 The Coin: A very beautiful and nicely preserved Roman AE bronze coin, struck in the time & reign of Roman Emperor Constantine I. it saw little use before it found a safe place to wait out the centuries. Always Genuine, I have never knowingly sold a copy or reproduction! As grading is subjective please Judge the coin photos to determine this for yourself_____________________________________________ Roman emperor History:Constantine I, byname Constantine the Great, Latin in full Flavius Valerius Constantinus, (born February 27, after 280 ce?, Naissus, Moesia—died May 22, 337, Ancyrona, near Nicomedia, Bithynia first Roman emperor to profess Christianity. He not only initiated the evolution of the empire into a Christian state but also provided the impulse for a distinctively Christian culture that prepared the way for the growth of Byzantine and Western medieval culture. Constantine was born probably in the later 280s ce. A typical product of the military governing class of the later 3rd century, he was the son of Flavius Valerius Constantius, an army officer, and his wife (or concubine) Helena. In 293 ce his father was raised to the rank of Caesar, or deputy emperor (as Constantius I Chlorus), and was sent to serve under Augustus (emperor) Maximian in the West. In 289 Constantius had separated from Helena in order to marry a stepdaughter of Maximian, and Constantine was brought up in the Eastern Empire at the court of the senior emperor Diocletian at Nicomedia (modern İzmit, Turkey). Constantine was seen as a youth by his future panegyrist, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, passing with Diocletian through Palestine on the way to a war in Egypt. Constantine’s experience as a member of the imperial court—a Latin-speaking institution—in the Eastern provinces left a lasting imprint on him. Educated to less than the highest literary standards of the day, he was always more at home in Latin than in Greek: later in life he had the habit of delivering edifying sermons, which he would compose in Latin and pronounce in Greek from professional translations. Christianity he encountered in court circles as well as in the cities of the East; and from 303, during the great persecution of the Christians that began at the court of Diocletian at Nicomedia and was enforced with particular intensity in the eastern parts of the empire, Christianity was a major issue of public policy. It is even possible that members of Constantine’s family were Christians. Throughout his life, Constantine ascribed his success to his conversion to Christianity and the support of the Christian God. The triumphal arch erected in his honour at Rome after the defeat of Maxentius ascribed the victory to the “inspiration of the Divinity” as well as to Constantine’s own genius. A statue set up at the same time showed Constantine himself holding aloft a cross and the legend “By this saving sign I have delivered your city from the tyrant and restored liberty to the Senate and people of Rome.” After his victory over Licinius in 324, Constantine wrote that he had come from the farthest shores of Britain as God’s chosen instrument for the suppression of impiety, and in a letter to the Persian king Shāpūr II he proclaimed that, aided by the divine power of God, he had come to bring peace and prosperity to all lands. An objective assessment of Constantine’s secular achievements is not easy—partly because of the predominantly religious significance with which the emperor himself invested his reign, partly because the restlessly innovatory character that dissenting contemporaries saw in his religious policy was also applied by them to the interpretation of his secular achievement. Some of Constantine’s contributions can, in fact, be argued to have been already implicit in the trends of the last half century. So may be judged the further development, taking place in his reign, of the administrative court hierarchy and an increasing reliance upon a mobile field army, to what was considered the detriment of frontier garrisons. The establishment by Constantine of a new gold coin, the solidus, which was to survive for centuries as the basic unit of Byzantine currency, could hardly have been achieved without the work of his predecessors in restoring political and military stability after the anarchy of the 3rd century. Perhaps more directly linked with Constantine’s own political and dynastic policies was the emergence of regional praetorian prefectures with supreme authority over civil financial administration but with no direct control over military affairs; this they yielded to new magistri, or “masters,” of the cavalry and infantry forces. The reduction of the prefects’ powers was seen by some as excessively innovatory, but the principle of the division of military and civil power had already been established by Diocletian. A real innovation, from which Constantine could expect little popularity, was his institution of a new tax, the collatio lustralis. It was levied every five years upon trade and business and seems to have become genuinely oppressive. A lavish spender, Constantine was notoriously openhanded to his supporters and was accused of promoting beyond their deserts men of inferior social status. More to the point is the accusation that his generosity was only made possible by his looting of the treasures of the pagan temples as well as by his confiscations and new taxes; and there is no doubt that some of his more prominent supporters owed their success, at least partly, to their timely adoption of the emperor’s religion. The foundation of Constantinople, an act of crucial long-term importance, was Constantine’s personal achievement. Yet it, too, had been foreshadowed; Diocletian enhanced Nicomedia to an extent that was considered to challenge Rome. The city itself exemplified the “religious rapacity” of the emperor, being filled with the artistic spoils of the Greek temples, while some of its public buildings and some of the mansions erected for Constantine’s supporters soon showed signs of their hasty construction. Its Senate, created to match that of Rome, long lacked the aristocratic pedigree and prestige of its counterpart. In military policy Constantine enjoyed unbroken success, with triumphs over the Franks, Sarmatians, and Goths to add to his victories in the civil wars; the latter, in particular, show a bold and imaginative mastery of strategy. Constantine was totally ruthless toward his political enemies, while his legislation, apart from its concessions to Christianity, is notable mainly for a brutality that became characteristic of late Roman enforcement of law. Politically, Constantine’s main contribution was perhaps that, in leaving the empire to his three sons, he reestablished a dynastic succession, but it was secured only by a sequence of political murders after his death. Above all, Constantine’s achievement was perhaps greatest in social and cultural history. It was the development, after his example, of a Christianized imperial governing class that, together with his dynastic success, most firmly entrenched the privileged position of Christianity; and it was this movement of fashion, rather than the enforcement of any program of legislation, that was the basis of the Christianization of the Roman Empire. Emerging from it in the course of the 4th century were two developments that contributed fundamentally to the nature of Byzantine and Western medieval culture: the growth of a specifically Christian, biblical culture that took its place beside the traditional Classical culture of the upper classes; and the extension of new forms of religious patronage between the secular governing classes and bishops, Christian intellectuals and holy men. Constantine left much for his successors to do, but it was his personal choice made in 312 that determined the emergence of the Roman Empire as a Christian state. It is not hard to see why Eusebius regarded Constantine’s reign as the fulfillment of divine providence—nor to concede the force of Constantine’s assessment of his own role as that of the 13th Apostle. ______________________________________________________________ Personalized COA included Photos are of the actual coin that you will receive..! 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