Denarius - Domitian IMP VIIII COS XI CENS POTES P P, Minerva

Domitian's censorial titles, tracked obsessively on his coinage, allow these coins to be dated with unusual precision — the CENS POTES P P formula appearing here places this piece firmly in 85 AD, before he assumed the title Censor Perpetuus later that year. He held the censorship not as a temporary magistracy but as a permanent personal power, a constitutional innovation that alarmed the Senate precisely because the censor traditionally controlled membership of that body. The coinage essentially broadcast the threat.