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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kevin McGonigal, post: 4392086, member: 72790&quot;]Oftentimes we write about our favorite ruler, king, emperor queen or empress and their numismatic connection or significance. I like it when we combine our hobby with other interests. Several times I have seen posted things like the most able ruler of Ancient times, the best Byzantine emperor, the worst Roman ruler, that sort of thing. I would like to propose that we write about the most underrated ruler of Ancient Rome, Republic or Empire. Tell us why you think that person was a great but unrecognized, uncelebrated, ignored ruler and then, if you have any, post some coins associated with that personage.</p><p><br /></p><p>Before I mention my choice, a few words about getting noticed or ignored in history. Historians write for an audience. They like to be published, read, quoted, cited and, if they have learned one thing, from Herodotus to Gibbon, it is that human beings want to read about the odd, bizarre, the weird, even the despicable, the dissolute, and the wicked. Human nature at its finest. For every historian who has written about Antoninus Pius there are twenty who have written about Nero or Caligula. Biographies of bad people, doing terrible things, sell copy. Suetonius, Tacitus, Livy well understood this. Whether they actually believed all the negative matters they wrote about Octavian, Tiberius, or Domitian, was immaterial. That sort of thing made their subjects interesting and their writings popular and themselves renowned as writers.&nbsp; The result of this is that Roman historians (and readers) tended to be uninterested in rulers whose reigns were dull, conventional, or just peaceful.</p><p><br /></p><p>But there is more to this than that. First Century AD&nbsp; Century Roman rulers were fortunate to be reigning during the Silver Period of Roman literature when Rome produced excellent writers. Just about any Roman Emperor of that period, well maybe not Nerva, could be made to be good reading. Early Third Century emperors like Septimius Severus or Caracalla were in many ways at least the equal of Frist Century emperors in negative traits but just are not as well known because either there were fewer capable historians to write about their lives and reigns or, if there were quality writers of their lives, their books have not survived. It becomes increasingly difficult to evaluate Roman rulers as the Third Century progresses as the quality of Roman historians seems to be in as much decline and fall as the empire they lived in. By the time we get to Ammianus it might as well have been grocery store tabloids that they have left us to judge their emperors by. It very well may be that the most capable of Roman emperors was not Augustus or Trajan but some obscure, (to us at any rate), emperor who ruled for almost fourteen years and was murdered by his mutinous troops because he was doing a fantastic job under terrible conditions but whose troops resented not being able to pillage their own cities and were kept usefully employed by incessant drilling and road building. if that emperor were leading a decent life, not slaughtering family members, not throwing wild parties and not hiring actors for the civil service, keeping&nbsp; the barbarians at bay and resettling refugees on reclaimed abandoned farms, who would write about him, what historian would care to try publishing that, and that assuming there was a writer capable of doing this.</p><p><br /></p><p>Which brings us to the man I think is the most underrated Roman ruler, an emperor who found himself thrust into the office, eventually on his own with no one else to lean on, confronted with a half dozen would be Caesars salivating to be his replacement, hordes of German barbarians swarming the Danube and Rhine defenses while, already across the Euphrates, the iron mailed Persians were at the gates of Antioch making for the Bosporus. Some of you have guessed that the Emperor I write of is Publius Licinius Egnatius Gallienus. I think that anyone examining&nbsp; this man&#039;s reign will recognize that few rulers have had to deal with so much going wrong and at the same time turning so much of it around. A Hellenist, a student of philosophy and the liberal arts, Gallienus found himself co-emperor with his father, Valerian, when it seems difficult for us to believe that anyone would want to be a Roman Emperor. But he rose to the challenge in ways as rare as Alfred the great rising to meet the Danes, or Churchill to the Nazis and like them he pulled it off, if saving the empire from dissolution was his goal. He helped establish an equilibrium on the Euphrates by countenancing a deal with a Palmyrene king, Odenathius, who respected Gallienus enough not to make a complete break with Rome in doing it. He tolerated a usurper in the newly seceded Gallic Empire under the usurper Postumus who, despite having executed the son of Gallienus, was left alone because he could defend that region better than Gallienus could. It was he who recognized that the Roman Army must change to meet the new kind of fighting it now faced. At first he increased the number of cavalry attached to each legion and then created all cavalry units that operated independently of legionary infantry, to cut off barbarians returning to their side of the frontiers loaded down with their captured loot. And he left his throne for one of those saddles, suffering two battle wounds, one of which almost killed him. Many of these mounted troops were now as well armored as the Persian cataphracts they faced in the East. And all of this while trying to put the empire back again after the ravages of Cyprian&#039;s plague took a quarter of the population away. And then, miserably murdered by his own troops for heavens only knows what petty reasons.&nbsp; And what was his epitaph for doing this?&nbsp; Pretty much ignominy. The Catholic Encyclopedia labels him indolent, fond of pleasure, cruel, ineffective. Yes, his father, Valerian had conducted an anti Christian persecution (which took the life of the martyr, St. Cyprian of Carthage, the Cyprian of the plague named for him) but oddly enough Gallienus had called off the persecution when he took over from his captured and imprisoned father, Valerian.</p><p><br /></p><p>No, unfortunately he had no scandal seeking court historian to gloat over his peccadillos, no Procopius with a secret history to snicker over, no Vergil to sing of his arms, conquests and battles. Not so much castigated, not so much pilloried or praised as ignored, forgotten and underrated. Such is the conclusion of Cleo, the muse of history.</p><p><br /></p><p>Below are some coins associated with Gallienus. On the top, from the left, a double denarius of his father, Valerian who, upon becoming emperor, chose him as his co-emperor. Notice the reverse which resembles the Caius and Lucius denarius of Augustus. It shows Valerian and Gallienus facing each other with their hands on shields.Next a sestertius of Gallienus with a well worn reverse of VIRTVS AVGG showing it was issued when both were still ruling together (Two G&#039;s). And the third coin on top is a double denarius of Gallienus with Diana carrying a torch. On the second line, from the left is another now, almost completely debased silver double denarius&nbsp; of Gallienus&nbsp; and on the reverse an appeal to Jove, IVOVI STATORI (maybe it worked). In the middle is a double denarius of Salonina, his empress wife and Ceres on the reverse. And lastly a better grade of silver double denarius of his contemporary rival, the break away Gallic emperor, Postumus, proclaiming the FELICITAS of the emperor. Hope you enjoyed the post and that you will tell us about the man you think is the most underrated Roman ruler.[ATTACH=full]1105128[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1105129[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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