Denarius - Domitian IMP CAES, Minerva

Domitian's final two years were marked by an atmosphere of terror — a reign of purges and conspiracy trials that ended with his assassination in September 96 AD, organized in part by members of his own household staff. His memory was immediately subjected to damnatio memoriae by the Senate, meaning inscriptions were defaced and images destroyed across the empire. Coins, however, proved harder to suppress; they remained in circulation regardless of official condemnation, making surviving examples something of an inadvertent archive of a despised reign.