Vespasian's Bum Rap

I had a friend over Saturday night to watch the football games, and in between the Redskins/Seahawks and Steelers/Jaguars games, he asked to see some of my coins. Here's a denarius of Vespasian that I showed him, struck in 73 AD when Vespasian held the office of Censor:

I love this coin, which is RIC 65, RSC 387. There's some wear on the reverse - an image of Vespasian sitting right on a curule chair with the legend PONTIF MAXIM, but the obverse, I think, is awesome. It's such an expressive portrait of one of Rome's greatest emperors. You can see the hairs on his head and the wrinkles on his admittedly austere face. The obverse legend reads IMP CAES VESP AVG CENS. Both legends, interestingly, read counter-clockwise, which I find charming. Imagine my disappointment, though, when my friend looked at this coin and remarked, "What a mean sonuvabitch this guy looks like!" Scotvs Capitis similarly remarked about one of his own Vesapsian coins, "doesn't he look like a cranky old fart?"

I have no idea how Vespasian was in his personal life; if he was, in fact, a "mean sonuvabitch" or a "cranky old fart." What I do know is Vespasian (r. 69-79 AD) was the best thing to happen to the empire at a critical time in its development. The reign of Nero (54-68 AD) was disastrous, and led to a painful civil war as at least three claimants vied in succession for the throne - Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, before Vespasian finally emerged victorious (69 AD - The Year of the Four Emperors.) Vespasian gave the empire practical and pragmatic leadership which provided much needed stable government.

One thing that's interesting about this coin, as I said above, is the expressive portrait. So many coins of Vespasian and his eldest son Titus appear worn and, although I've never conducted a scientific study, it seems to me that they appear worn in a higher proportion to coins of Domitian, the third and final emperor in the Flavian Dynasty. I heard a rumor that the reason this is is because the Flavians used a softer silver for their denarii. This isn't persuasive to me, though, as it doesn't explain why Domitian's coins would survive with more detail. In fact, Domitian raised the silver content of the Denarius by 12% (only to devaluate it in 85 AD.)

No, I think the reason is simply that Vespasian issued a massive amount of coinage, possibly because he had to raise a lot of cash, quickly, early in his reign, and consequently, the fineness of the silver and the quality of his silver coins was sketchy. But this appears to only have been a short-term problem.

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