Denarius - Domitian P M TR POT III IMP V COS X P P, Minerva

The tribunician dating on this coin — TR POT III — places its issue squarely in 84 AD, the year Domitian dramatically reorganized the Rhine legions following the Chattan war. He had celebrated a triumph for that campaign the previous year, widely mocked by contemporaries including Tacitus, who noted that the captives paraded were Germans purchased from merchants rather than taken in battle. The imperial acclamation IMP V reflected that same war.

Domitian raised legionary pay by one-third — the first increase since Augustus — funded partly by reducing the silver fineness of the denarius, a tension visible in coins of precisely this period.