Trajan & Hadrian Dupondii: Pax Stomping a Dacian; Salus with a Giant Bartlett Pear

There's been some enjoyable recent posts about lower grade coins, so I was inspired to share a couple of scruffy dupondii I just got on the cheap.

As for condition, 30-some years ago when I first started collecting ancients, I was fairly picky about condition - a few missing obverse letters would put me "off" a coin.

Since then I have dramatically changed my outlook - high-grade pristine ancients are great to look at (which is one of the reasons why I like CT so much - there so many beautiful high-grade coins out there). But I have no desire to own such coins - I can't afford 'em is the biggest obstacle, but even if I won the lottery I think I'd be buying in the VF or lower range. We'll see if my CT posts improve after I win the lottery.

Until the lottery comes through, here are two dupondii I just got, Trajan with Pax stomping a Dacian and Hadrian with Salus feeding a giant Bartlett pear to the Salus snake (I the "pear" is, I'm guessing, part of some ancient adhesion incident in the coin's past).



Trajan Æ Dupondius
Rome Mint
(103-111 A.D.)
IMP CAES NERVAE TRAIANO AVG GER [DAC PM TRP COS V PP], radiate bust r., with aegis / SPQR OPTIMO PRINCIPI SC Pax standing left holding branch & cornucopiae; foot on Dacian's head and shoulders.
RIC 505 var. (no aegis).
(11.15 grams / 27 mm)



Hadrian Æ Dupondius
(125-128 A.D.)
Rome Mint
[HADRIA]NVS AVG[VSTVS], radiate bust right / [COS III] S C Salus seated left on throne, feeding from patera snake coiling up from altar and resting left arm on throne
RIC 657i.
(12.06 grams / 26 x 23 mm)

Attribution Note:

Most of these in online auctions have slight drapery on left shoulder, which OCRE says is RIC 657j. This one appears to have no drapery which OCRE says is RIC 657i.

 

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Nice, I especially like the Trajan. Congrats.

 

Nice Trajan indeed. I collect coins related to Trajan's wars with Dacia. I do not have your type, though.

Here's a dupondius that I got recently. The patina is nicer in hand

 

Nice coin, Agricantus - I had an as with the horseman spearing the Dacian, but it was so worn, so pitted, that it was really, really hard to make out. Even by my low standards it was unacceptable, so I sold it off in a lot.

So my only Trajan Dacian War issue is the one I posted. Showing Pax stomping on a Dacian gives some idea, perhaps, of Rome's definition of "peace." Tacitus, from Wikiquote:

Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium, atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

• To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire, and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tacitus