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Message:: [QUOTE="Tejas, post: 8174101, member: 84905"]Hi David, sorry to hear about your loss and health problems. I hope things will look up soon. I post a coin that you know very well and which gives me joy every time I open my albums. Maybe it will cheer you up to see it again: Carinus , AD 283 - 285 Obv.: IMP CARINVS PF AVGRev.: FIDES MILITVM  - K (crescent) AEMint: Rome, 5th officina, 6th emission AD 285Measurements: 3.71 gr, 22mm About Carinus, we will probably never know if he was a capable emperor or if he was the bloodthirsty tyrant that his successor made him out to be. I strongly suspect that he was much better than his reputation. After all, he deified his father, his brother and his son as evidenced by the coins. In his short reign, he waged war against the Germanic Quadi at the Danube and he led a campaign in Britain, earning him the titles of Germanicus Maximus and Britannicus Maximus. After the death of his father and his brother he marched east where he successfully dealt with the revolt of Sabinus Julianus in Pannonia.He confronted Diocletian at the battle of the Margus River in July 285. The reports are contradictory: Carinus was either victorious, but killed at the height of his triumph by an officer who's wife he had seduced or, more likely in my view, his troops defected to Diocletian who had instigated his murder. In any case, I think the coin below is a particularly nice example for two reasons:1. The revers shows how important the trust of the army was for any Emperor of the 3rd century and that it was fatal for Carinus to lose this trust.2. I think this portrait with the curly beard is the most charming depiction of the emperor. It stands for a last flourishing of the old individualistic style of coin portraiture before coin portraits under Diocletian would become increasingly more uniform and stylized. [ATTACH=full]1428218[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]

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