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Message:: [QUOTE="GinoLR, post: 7968389, member: 128351"][ATTACH=full]1381867[/ATTACH] Platform coins:Sestertius of Trajan. The platform must be called a tribunal, I think... It is a pity the reverse legend is almost entirely rubbed off, it is REX PARTHIS DATVS, "a king given to the Parthians". Trajan had invaded what is today's Iraq and taken Ctesiphon, the royal capital of the Parthian Empire (Ctesiphon was c. 30 km south of today's Baghdad city centre). The Parthian king fled to the East, in today's Iran, where he hoped the Romans would never get him. Trajan occupied the whole Mesopotamia to the Gulf but some cities started to revolt, the Romans fought back to crush insurgencies but it was just an unwinnable war, the kind we know too well... In the end Trajan decided to withdraw his forces and leave in Ctesiphon a pro-Roman puppet-king, a Parthian prince named Parthamaspates. Of course, as soon as the Romans had all left, the former king went back, toppled Parthamaspates and restored his power. Trajan died on the way back to Rome.On this sestertius Trajan is seated on a curule chair on top of his tribunal, an officer (the Praetorian Prefect, probably) standing behind, and is crowning Parthamaspates dressed in Parthian clothes in front of an allegory of Parthia kneeling. Nice propaganda: for the Romans who got these new coins in Rome, the war was supposed to have been successful![/QUOTE]