Diva Faustina I Silver Denarius RIC III Antoninus Pius 362

Monetary Context and Imperial Consecration

During the mid-second century AD, the silver denarius functioned as the foundational silver denomination of the Roman Empire, facilitating tax payments, legionary wages, and inter-provincial commerce. Under the reign of Antoninus Pius (reigned 138 to 161 AD), the Roman monetary system enjoyed remarkable administrative stability, characterized by consistent weight standards and predictable precious metal content. The death of Empress Faustina the Elder in late 140 or early 141 AD prompted an exceptional numismatic response. Grief-stricken and politically motivated to solidify the religious prestige of the Antonine dynasty, Antoninus Pius persuaded the Roman Senate to vote for her immediate consecration (deificatio), officially enrolling her into the state pantheon as Diva Faustina. The imperial mint at Rome was tasked with issuing a vast, prolonged volume of consecration coinage across gold, silver, and bronze. The denarius RIC III Antoninus Pius 362 belongs to this extensive commemorative program. By placing the deified Augusta in visual and religious dialogue with Ceres, the goddess of grain, maternal protection, and fertility, the imperial administration intertwined personal grief with public welfare, assuring the Roman populace of ongoing divine favour and agricultural stability under the auspices of the imperial house.

Mint Production and Physical Standards

The denarius RIC III Antoninus Pius 362 was manufactured exclusively at the principal imperial mint in the city of Rome. During this era, the Rome mint operated with highly structured officinae (workshops), where skilled celatores (die engravers) maintained rigorous artistic consistency across numerous dies. The silver standard under Antoninus Pius generally maintained a target fineness between 75 and 80 percent silver, alloyed predominantly with copper, reflecting the metrological norms established during Hadrian's later years. Blanks were cast in individual moulds or prepared from flattened silver rods and then hot-struck between engraved bronze or iron dies. The theoretical weight standard for the denarius of this period hovered around 3.2 to 3.4 grams, with diameters typically ranging between 17 and 19 millimetres, though individual struck specimens inevitably display variations due to manual striking and flan trimming. Die alignment for the series was predominantly adjusted to either a vertical (twelve o'clock) or inverted (six o'clock) axis. The enormous volume of surviving specimens belonging to the Diva Faustina Ceres types highlights the extensive die output maintained by the Rome mint over an extended period.

Obverse Portraiture and Style

The obverse of RIC III Antoninus Pius 362 features a right-facing, draped bust of the deceased empress, presented without a veil or diadem on this specific type. Faustina's portrait is rendered in the classicizing, serene aesthetic characteristic of Antonine court portraiture. Her profile exhibits refined, idealized facial features that balance individual physiognomy with timeless divine calm. The most striking element of the obverse design is her intricate hairstyle, which set court fashion across the Mediterranean world: the hair is meticulously waved in horizontal ripples or loops around the temples and ears, drawn smoothly back from the brow, and gathered into a tall, braided chignon or coiled plait secured at the summit of the head. Subtle drapery folds gather over the curve of her shoulders and the base of the neck, creating an elegant pedestal for the imperial likeness. In contrast to earlier consecrated empresses such as Diva Julia or Diva Plotina, who were frequently depicted veiled on posthumous issues, Faustina is here rendered bare-headed, allowing her signature coiffure to serve as an unmistakable symbol of imperial identity and female majesty.

Reverse Iconography: Ceres and the Torch

The reverse design of RIC III Antoninus Pius 362 portrays the goddess Ceres, draped and veiled, standing facing left. In her right hand, she holds a tall, vertical torch that rests upon the ground or extends downward alongside her body, while her left hand gently gathers and elevates a fold of her stola or palla. Ceres was the Roman divinity of agriculture, grain, and motherly devotion, closely synchronized with the Greek goddess Demeter and her search for Persephone, an allegory intrinsically bound to the imagery of the torch and the Eleusinian mysteries. The veiled head of Ceres underscores the solemn, sacred nature of the scene, while her raised drapery echoes classical Hellenistic sculptural types representing modesty, movement, and divine presence. Within the context of Faustina's consecration, the assimilation of the empress to Ceres performed vital religious and political work: it presented the deified Faustina as an eternal benefactress of Rome, watching over the annona (the grain supply) and the fertility of the empire. The torch also carried mortuary connotations of divine illumination, guiding souls into the heavenly sphere and reinforcing the posthumous elevation of Diva Faustina to divine splendour.

Epigraphy and Legend Analysis

The legends on RIC III Antoninus Pius 362 are remarkable for their concise, evocative phrasing, reflecting the elevated status of the empress. The obverse bears the simple, unpunctuated legend DIVA FAVSTINA, running clockwise along the outer border from lower left to lower right. The title DIVA explicitly declares her deification following the senatorial decree of consecratio, replacing the customary titles of living Augustae and eliminating patronymic or marital formulas. On the reverse, the legend consists solely of the single word AVGVSTA, positioned horizontally across the upper field or broken around the central figure of Ceres. This reverse legend emphasizes supreme imperial dignity and sacred reverence, transferring the highest female imperial honour into the divine realm. Epigraphically, the lettering conforms to the elegant Roman monumental serif style of the mid-second century, characterized by balanced proportions, clear line modulation, and subtle triangular serifs at the stroke terminals. The absence of Antoninus Pius's own name on both sides of the coin was intentional, granting the entire visual and textual focus of the denarius to the memory and divine veneration of Faustina herself.

Typology and Chronological Classification

In the fundamental system of The Roman Imperial Coinage (RIC), Harold Mattingly classified this specific type as RIC III Antoninus Pius 362, grouping it within the posthumous series assigned collectively to the period beginning in 141 AD. Neighbouring types in RIC include variants where Ceres holds two torches, ears of corn, or a sceptre, as well as issues featuring veiled obverse portraits or differing legend breaks. Although older catalogues, including Henry Cohen's Description historique des monnaies frappées sous l'Empire romain (where it appears as Cohen 104), treated these posthumous issues as a unified early-140s emission, modern die-link analysis by Martin Beckmann has substantially revised this chronological framework. Beckmann demonstrated that the earliest consecration coins of Faustina, struck immediately after her death in 141 AD, carried the obverse legend DIVA AVGVSTA FAVSTINA. The simplified obverse legend DIVA FAVSTINA combined with the reverse legend AVGVSTA was introduced later in the 140s AD and continued to be produced in successive waves throughout the remaining years of Antoninus Pius's reign, probably extending into the 150s AD. RIC III 362 therefore represents an ongoing, highly productive phase of the consecration coinage rather than a brief commemorative emission restricted strictly to 141 AD.

Circulation and Hoard Evidence

As an integral component of the Antonine denarius supply, RIC III Antoninus Pius 362 circulated extensively throughout the Roman world. Hoard evidence from Roman Britain, the Rhine frontier, Gaul, Italy, and the Danubian provinces confirms that consecration denarii of Diva Faustina were among the most ubiquitous silver coins in second-century currency. Because the silver content of Antoninus Pius's coinage remained high compared to subsequent reigns, these denarii circulated alongside earlier Trajanic and Hadrianic issues. They experienced slow, steady circulation wear and were frequently preserved in domestic savings and military hoards. Following the substantial debasement of the silver currency under Septimius Severus and Caracalla in the late second and early third centuries AD, older Antonine denarii like RIC III 362 were gradually hoarded or melted down due to Gresham's law, as their superior intrinsic silver content made them more valuable than contemporary provincial or debased imperial coinage. Nevertheless, stray finds and deposits from the mid-third century AD demonstrate that Faustina's Ceres denarii survived in everyday commerce for well over a century after their initial striking at Rome.

References

1. Diva Faustina: Coinage and Cult in Rome (Numismatic Studies 26). pp. 65-88
2. The Roman Imperial Coinage, Vol. III: Antoninus Pius to Commodus. p. 71, no. 362
3. Online Coins of the Roman Empire (OCRE): RIC III Antoninus Pius 362. RIC III Antoninus Pius 362
4. Untersuchungen zur römischen Reichsprägung des zweiten Jahrhunderts, Teil III: Die Reichsprägung zur Zeit des Antoninus Pius. p. 433, no. 433