[ancients] Happy Birthday Diocletian!!

Happy Birthday, Caesar Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus Augustus!

Lived : 22 December 244 - 3 December 311 AD
Reigned : 20 November 284 - 1 May 305 AD

Please post your favorite coins of Diocletian - great reformer, great persecutor, great lover of cabbages.

Lactantius (advisor to Constantine and tutor to his son), even as he names Galerius the chief instigator of the Great Persecution of Christians, calls Diocletian the "author of ill" and "deviser of misery" who went about "ruining all things". Pretty harsh words for the man who effectively ended the Crisis of the Third Century, modernized the hopelessly outmoded Imperial bureaucracy, and ensured that there was even an Empire left for Constantine to eventually take over.

Personally, I think he was one of the most interesting characters of the period. I just hold him responsible for all those coins with the Genius reverses and starting the whole diadem wearing trend popular with the LRB-minting crowd.



DIOCLETIAN
Post reform radiate
RIC VI Heraclea 13 or 21 (not sure how to tell these two apart), 295-296 or 297-298 AD
O: IMP C C VAL DIOCLETIANVS P F AVG, radiate, draped, cuirassed bust right.
R: CONCORDIA MILITVM, emperor standing right, receiving Victory on globe from Jupiter, standing left holding sceptre, HA in lower center.

Z.

 

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Oh my God!! => is it already D-dawg's birthday!! (wow, how time flies, eh?)

I only have one Diocletian coin, but it is one of my very first ancient coins and still one of my favourites:

 

What a great portrait! I love that gaze he's got on his face.

 

I have far too many Diocletians.....making it difficult to choose just one.

Diocletian Follis
Obv:– D N DIOCLETIANO FELICISSIMO SEN AVG, laureate bust right in imperial mantle, olive branch in right hand, mappa in left
Rev:– PROVIDENTIA DEORVM QVIES AVGG, Providentia standing right, extending right hand to Quies standing left, branch upward in right hand, vertical sceptre in left
Minted in Cyzicus (not Trier) ( S | F / KS //PTR)
Reference:– RIC VI Trier 677a (R) (see notes)
Notes:- This is perhaps one of the most unusual issues in the entire follis series. It is nearly always attributed to Trier (Treveri), but a comparison of portrait styles and an examination of follis hoards reveals that this issue was not struck in Trier but in Cyzicus. Two officinae struck this issue, and the KS in the field between the two figures is actually the mintmark, not the PTR. A look at the coins of Cyzicus (RIC 22-23) shows that the same two officinae struck this issue without the PTR also. The Senior Augustus issues of Diocletian and Maximianus were struck at every mint currently in operation. Apparently, the first coins of this type were prepared at Trier and examples were sent to the various mints for the individual mints to copy. At Cyzicus, the die engravers copied everything, including the Trier mintmark and put their own mintmark in the field. Someone soon realized the mistake and new dies were prepared with the mintmark in its proper location.

 

Diocletian (284 - 305 A.D.)
Silvered Antoninianus
O: IMP C C VAL DIOCLETIANVS P F AVG, Radiate, draped and cuirassed bust right.
R: IOV ET HERCV CONSER AVGG, Jupiter stg R hldg globe and scepter; Hercules stg L hldg Victory, club,& lionskin, crescent & Z in center, XXI in ex.
Antioch Mint
4.0g
21.6mm
RIC V 323

 

Thats nice....I love the post abdication coins. I have a few large tetrarchy coins, my fave being a Galerius which i paid tooooooo much for .... I was meant to sell it , but i cant do it!

 

ps. sorry, I know its not Galerius's b'day, but to hell with it.....

 

From what I've read Diocletion seem like a financial genius, but I'm not going to call him a saint (not even close). In his personal life he was a bit messed up (like most emperors were).

With that being said, he made some pretty cool coins!

Diocletian Potin Tetadrachm of Alexandria. Year 9 = 293-294 AD.
DIOKLETIANOC CEB, laureate & cuirassed bust right
ENATOV, L to right, Elpis standing left, holding flower and raising hem of robe, A in ex
Milne 5063

 

My only coin of Diocletian:

 

I like VK

 

It seems to me that we have had quite a few Diocletian threads lately and I have posted all my new coins to them. Here I will show my old favorite which is a common type but has beautiful color to the point that I shot it with my better camera which allows a huge print that really looks nice but I cold never figure out where in my home decor I would put a 20x30" print of a coin under 1" diameter.


Also, please see my Alexandria mint abdication coin with KP in field. I am not saying this has any relation to the KS situation on the coin Martin showed but I would feel better about his theory if I understood the meaning of my KP. I will point out that my coin is correct Alexandria style. Before now, this coin's greatest claim to fame was appearance as an example of what $10 would buy in 2001 on one of my favorite web pages:
http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/acmshow.html


The type also relates to another recent thread since it was the first use of DN as an obverse honorific.

 

Above your bed, of course! Doug, does the DN first appear on the post-abdication issues?

 

Someone will correct me but I believe we first see DN on the abdication issues and next on the sons of Constantine and Licinius during the 3-teens. The real rulers did not start using it until the FTR issues, I believe. This is memory, someone who wishes to catch me in error can look them up. I maintain that it was not considered a great honor because the boys dropped the use after a short time. There are rather few Crispus examples.

 

D N CONSTANTIO NOB C on a rare Constantius I aureus dated to 293 - 294 AD :

https://www.numisbids.com/n.php?p=lot&sid=604&lot=51

I think this supports the theory that DN was a less prestigious title than IMP since it was given to a newly minted caesar.

Also, it would seem logical to me that Galerius, after he took over from Diocletian, would not have happily allowed the retired augustii to maintain a title associated with command of the armies.

 

A question remains when a ruler of great power abdicates on his own volition whether the new ruler has power over him. Diocletian was no problem since he went to his retirement villa and had no contact with the state machine. Maximianus was not a voluntary retiree but told his time had come by Diocletian. When he tried to come back he was more of a usurper than an honored statesman.

Modern states, at least the civilized ones, don't provide good comparisons. In the US, Teddy Roosevelt decided not to run for President again and passed the job to Taft. When he decided to return (as a 'Bull Moose') he split the Republican vote and insured the election of the Democrat Wilson. Romans of the period used swords rather than ballots. We will never know how the army would have responded to Diocletian returning or Galerius treating him in the smallest way as less than the power that he had been or still was. Maximianus had always been Diocletian's loyal right hand but never really his full equal. The situation was made worse by Maximianus having a son with his own ambitions while Diocletian had only a daughter who was married to Galerius.

All this is why I say you can't collect just Diocletian. His coins and history are too tied to a quite a few other rulers.

 

I would very much like to collect an abdication issue of both Diocletian and Maximianus, but they are quite rare and pricey in the grades I prefer, so at the moment I have to be content with window shopping.

 

i purchased a little diocletian yesterday...it's incoming!

 

Always a good feeling. One should always have incoming coins.

 

ooooooooooooooooh yeah! like it's my birthday!