Denarius - Hadrian AFRICA, Africa

Hadrian's extensive tour of the African provinces in 128 AD directly prompted this issue. The "province series" — a sustained coinage celebrating individual regions of the empire — was unprecedented in Roman imperial minting and appears to have been a deliberate political project tied to Hadrian's well-documented travels, the most ambitious by any sitting emperor. Africa, as the wealthiest grain-producing province outside Egypt, received particular attention.

RIC II.3 1500 belongs to the revised second edition of RIC volume II, which substantially reorganized and renumbered Hadrianic issues from the earlier Mattingly-Sydenham classification — cross-referencing older catalogs requires care.