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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Heliodromus, post: 7825119, member: 120820&quot;]That&#039;s an interesting question!</p><p><br /></p><p>Judging by the profusion of London-only types, it appears that the London mint was taking the lead at the time (c. 307 AD) this type was introduced by Constantine.</p><p><br /></p><p>There are two common aspects to Mars we see on coins - Mars the victor/aggressor (marching forward) and Mars the peace-maker/conservator.</p><p><br /></p><p>At London we first (briefly) see Constantine using the traditional &quot;MARS VICTOR&quot; and &quot;MARTI PACIF&quot; legends, before replacing these with the corresponding &quot;MARTI PATRI PROPVGNATORI/CONSERVATORI&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>Galerius had recently used &quot;MARTI PATRI&quot; [sic] on aureii at Nicomedia, and &quot;MARTI PROPVGNATORI&quot; had been used by Constantius I on aureii at Trier, but the &quot;MARTI PATRI PROPVGNATORI/CONSERVATORI&quot; combinations appear to have been introduced by Constantine, and appear to have been a deliberate switch, not just a traditional legend used because there was room to do so.</p><p><br /></p><p>Lactantius in &quot;Divine Institutions&quot; has this to say about the use of the honorific &quot;father&quot; (i.e pater/patri) epithet:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>So, it seems that Constantine was using a traditionally deferential way to address Mars who he was at that time looking to for support in battle (a role later to be taken first by Sol, then the Christian god).</p><p><br /></p><p>A rather interesting aspect to this is the full context of that Lactantius quote, which comes from Divine Institutions, Book IV, Chapter III, and had been written by Lactantius around 303-311 AD (around same time, c.307, that Constantine had introduced these legends).</p><p><br /></p><p>Lactantius (who would go on to become tutor to Constantine&#039;s son Crispus) was actually referring to this tradition of referring to so many gods (Mars, Liber, Neptune, Saturn, etc) as &quot;father&quot; as an argument against nature (man can only have one father!), as opposed to worshipping the one &quot;lord of nature&quot; (Christian god), the real father![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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