Trajan: Silver denarius Coinage

Coinage Scope and Selected Issues

The Silver denarius coinage issued in the name of Trajan includes issues distinguished by their portraits, inscriptions, reverse designs and mint attribution. This study concentrates on the Dacian victory issues, rather than presenting one design as the entire denomination.

The issue dates and detailed iconographic descriptions below apply to the discussed groups, not automatically to every coin bearing the ruler's name. Other types and mints require their own catalogue comparison. An individual gallery coin must be assessed from its own inscriptions and institutional record; its measurements and provenance do not define the whole coinage.

Historical Context

Marcus Ulpius Traianus governed the Roman Empire from January 98 CE until his death in August 117 CE. Elevated through adoption by the emperor Nerva in the autumn of 97 CE to reconcile the frontier legions, Trajan inaugurated an administration marked by military expansion and close collaboration with the Roman Senate. This political rapport led the Senate to award him the distinctive honorific title Optimus Princeps, meaning 'Best of Princes'.

The central phase of Trajan's reign was dominated by two expansive campaigns across the Danube against the Dacian kingdom led by King Decebalus: the First Dacian War (101-102 CE) and the Second Dacian War (105-106 CE). Following the fall of the mountain stronghold of Sarmizegetusa and the death of Decebalus in 106 CE, Rome organized Dacia into an imperial province. The conquest secured the royal treasury of Decebalus and opened rich gold and silver mines in the Carpathian region, providing massive revenues that funded monumental public buildings in Rome, civic distributions, and state finances.

In monetary policy, the historian Cassius Dio recorded that Trajan withdrew and melted down obsolete, worn currency upon returning from Dacia. While earlier numismatic literature assumed that a major debasement of the silver denarius coincided with this recoinage around 107 CE, archaeometallurgical research by Kevin Butcher and Matthew Ponting demonstrated that the reduction of denarius fineness from approximately 93 percent to 89-90 percent had already occurred earlier, around 99-100 CE during Trajan's third consulship. The expansive silver issues struck under his fifth consulship (103-111 CE) operated on this established alloy standard, circulating widely to advertise the pacification of Dacia and senatorial devotion across the Mediterranean basin.

Selected Issues: Obverse: Iconographic Composition

The obverse displays an individualized, mature portrait of Trajan facing right. The emperor is depicted clean-shaven in the classical imperial tradition, showing straight hair brushed forward over a firm brow, a straight nose, and a muscular neck. A laurel wreath encircles his head, fastened at the back with ribbons (taeniae) that trail downward toward the nape.

Within the Rome mint issues of the fifth consulship, die engravers executed four primary treatments of the imperial bust: a laureate head with bare neck, a laureate bust displaying slight drapery gathered over the far left shoulder, a laureate bust wearing an aegis on the shoulder, and a fully draped and cuirassed bust viewed from the side or behind. These variants reflect deliberate workshop variations within the mint of Rome rather than distinct administrative denominations.

Selected Issues: Obverse: Epigraphy and Inscriptions

The obverse inscription is executed in capital Latin script along the outer perimeter of the flan:

IMP TRAIANO AVG GER DAC P M TR P COS V P P

In expanded grammatical Latin, the legend reads: Imperatori Traiano Augusto Germanico Dacico, Pontifici Maximo, Tribunicia Potestate, Consuli Quintum, Patri Patriae.

In translation: 'To the Emperor Trajan Augustus, victor over the Germans, victor over the Dacians, High Priest, invested with Tribunician Power, Consul for the fifth time, Father of the Fatherland.'

The entire legend is formulated in the dative case (Imperatori Traiano...), establishing the coin as an explicit dedication to the princeps. The victory title Dacicus (DAC) provides a terminus post quem of late 102 CE, when the title was officially accepted following the First Dacian War. The consular specification COS V dates the inception of this broader issue sequence to Trajan's fifth consulship, which commenced on 1 January 103 CE and continued until his sixth consulship began on 1 January 112 CE.

Selected Issues: Reverse: Iconographic Composition

The reverse composition features a Roman martial trophy (tropaeum) standing erect upon an exergual groundline, functioning as an explicit emblem of imperial victory over the Dacian nation. The trophy is constructed on a vertical wooden post fitted with captured arms and armour: a scaled or plate cuirass, a Dacian helmet, crossed oval and curved shields, and spears.

At the lower right base of the trophy, a male Dacian captive sits on the ground in an attitude of subjugation and mourning. The prisoner is depicted bearded and attired in provincial costume consisting of long trousers (braccae). He sits facing right with his knees drawn toward his chest, resting his head against his right hand in an established classical posture of dejection and territorial defeat.

Selected Issues: Reverse: Epigraphy and Inscriptions

The reverse inscription is struck in capital Latin lettering around the upper and side margins:

S P Q R OPTIMO PRINCIPI

In expanded grammatical form, the text reads: Senatus Populusque Romanus Optimo Principi.

In translation: 'The Senate and the People of Rome to the Best of Princes.'

This reverse legend works syntactically with the obverse. The Senate and the People of Rome (Senatus Populusque Romanus) stand in the nominative case as the subject offering the dedication, while Optimo Principi continues the dative honorific address begun on the obverse face. The formula Optimus Princeps, originally an informal appellation used by senatorial peers, was integrated into regular reverse legends from 103 CE onwards, serving as an ideological affirmation of constitutional harmony between the monarch and the traditional aristocracy before its later transfer to the obverse as a formal imperial cognomen in 114 CE.

Typology and Documented Variants

Trajan's Dacian trophy denarii from his fifth consulship constitute a unified typological series struck at the mint of Rome. Subtypes are classified according to specific portrait drapery and cuirass arrangements:

• RIC II 220 (MIR 14, 190a): Obverse with laureate bust right, showing aegis on the left shoulder. Reverse depicts a trophy of arms with a Dacian captive seated right at its base.
• RIC II 221 (MIR 14, 190c; BMCRE III 185): Obverse with laureate bust right, fully draped and cuirassed. Reverse carries the trophy with Dacian captive seated right.
• RIC II 222 (MIR 14, 190b; BMCRE III 187): Obverse with laureate bust right, with slight drapery visible on the far left shoulder. Reverse carries the trophy with Dacian captive seated right.
• RIC II 223 (MIR 14, 190d; BMCRE III 189): Obverse with laureate head right, bare neck. Reverse carries the trophy with Dacian captive seated right.

Related contemporary victory denarii from the same consular phase include the type depicting Dacia seated in mourning upon a pile of captured arms with the exergual legend DAC CAP (RIC II 98 / MIR 14, 283b), bearing the reverse inscription COS V P P S P Q R OPTIMO PRINC. Earlier references occasionally misattributed gold aureus issues, such as RIC II 224 depicting the imperial Alimenta program (ALIM ITAL), to the trophy denarius sequence, but modern corpuses strictly segregate the distinct metals and designs.

Scholarly Debates and Attribution Limitations

Numismatic scholarship has engaged in three major debates concerning the fifth-consulship denarii of Trajan:

1. Chronological Precision within the Fifth Consulship: While Harold Mattingly and Edward Sydenham catalogued all issues bearing COS V under an open date range of 103 to 111 CE, Bernhard Woytek demonstrated through hoard analysis and die links that production was not distributed evenly over the nine-year interval. The Dacian trophy issues cluster between late 105 and 107 CE, coinciding directly with the conclusion of the Second Dacian War and the ensuing triumph in Rome.

2. Silver Standards and the 107 CE Reform: Traditional historical accounts linked the post-Dacian recall of older coinage reported by Cassius Dio to an assumed reduction in denarius purity in 107 CE. However, archaeometallurgical analyses by Kevin Butcher and Matthew Ponting argued that Trajan's monetary debasement to an 89-90 percent standard occurred around 99-100 CE. The recall in 107 CE was therefore a systematic demonetization of pre-Neronian and worn republican silver stocks rather than the introduction of a lower alloy.

3. Dating the Restored Coinage (Restitutio): Scholars remain divided over the relationship between the 107 CE bullion recoinage and Trajan's famous series of restored coins honoring Republican and early imperial types. Holger Komnick placed the restored coinage directly in 107 CE as an immediate artistic commemoration of melted types. Conversely, Woytek argued on hoard and stylistic grounds that the restored issues appeared later, around 112-113 CE, alongside the dedication of the Forum and Column of Trajan.

References

1. Denarius (Coin) Portraying Emperor Trajan, 1923.1275. Collection Database, The Art Institute of Chicago
2. Cat. 47 Denarius Portraying Trajan: Curatorial Entry. Roman Art at the Art Institute of Chicago (2016)
3. RIC II Trajan 220. Online Coins of the Roman Empire (OCRE)
4. RIC II Trajan 221. Online Coins of the Roman Empire (OCRE)
5. RIC II Trajan 222. Online Coins of the Roman Empire (OCRE)
6. RIC II Trajan 223. Online Coins of the Roman Empire (OCRE)
7. RIC II Trajan 224. Online Coins of the Roman Empire (OCRE)
8. Denarius of Trajan, 1911.23.27. American Numismatic Society Collection Database (Larnaca Hoard)
9. The Metallurgy of Roman Silver Coinage: From the Reform of Nero to the Reform of Trajan. Kevin Butcher and Matthew Ponting, Cambridge University Press (2015). First-century silver coinage; not a direct source for Severan fineness.
10. Roman History, Book 68.15.3. Cassius Dio, Epitome of Book 68 (Loeb Classical Library, 1925)
11. Die Reichsprägung des Kaisers Traianus (98-117). Moneta Imperii Romani (MIR) 14, Vienna (2010), pp. 293-296, 845-849 (further reading)
12. Die Restifikationsmünzen der Flavier bis Trajan. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin (2001) (further reading)