Denarius - Domitian IMP XXI COS XV CENS P P P, Minerva

IMP XXI dates this coin precisely to 91 AD, when Domitian held his twenty-first imperatorial acclamation — a figure inflated well beyond battlefield necessity, as later emperors and ancient critics alike recognized. The CENS P P P title reflects his assumption of censor perpetuus, a constitutional novelty he used to control senatorial membership directly, bypassing traditional Republican procedure. Suetonius and Pliny the Younger both recorded the aristocratic resentment this generated, resentment that culminated in his assassination in 96 AD and the subsequent damnatio memoriae that makes well-preserved examples of his coinage more notable than their production numbers alone would suggest.