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Message:: [QUOTE="GinoLR, post: 24818000, member: 128351"]Congratulations, this is an excellent specimen! This denarius minted in 82 BC is historically important. It is the first time ever that a Roman coin-type represented a living person. Showing a living person on a coin was a taboo in Rome: coins may only represent gods and kings. Deceased persons were acceptable too, for they were assimilated with gods. But a living person, a magistrate, never! it would mean it's a king. Our modern coinage still follows this rule. On €uro coins you can see the portrait of kings (or popes, or grand dukes), but never of presidents or prime ministers. There is some hesitation for dictators: coins of nazi Germany did not have the portrait of Hitler (who was just the Reichskanzler), but there were Spanish coins with the portrait of Franco, and the French mint under Vichy attempted to create coins with the portrait of Pétain. On this denarius the man in the quadriga is obviously a triumphant imperator, and it can be no other than L. Cornelius Sulla, whose name is written at the exergue. Sulla who was alive and well at the time. A taboo had been broken. At least, the figure is too small, it's not a portrait. When, later, Julius Caesar had coins minted with his portrait in 44 BC, he was assassinated for this. But it had been done, the taboo was now definitively broken and, after Caesar's assassination, even his murderer Brutus had coins minted with his own portrait...[/QUOTE]