Aureus - Senior Augustus Maximianus HERCVLIO VICTORI; Alexandria

Maximian issued this coin as Senior Augustus following his forced abdication at the Conference of Carnuntum in May 305, a retirement Diocletian pressured him into alongside his own. The title HERCVLIO VICTORI — invoking his divine patron Hercules — was a pointed assertion of continued prestige for a man who found abdication intolerable. He would indeed renounce retirement within a year, drawn back into the wars of succession that followed the tetrarchic collapse.

Alexandria's mint was among the more prolific producers of gold in the eastern provinces during this transitional period, operating under the administrative orbit of the new Augustus Galerius.