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Denarius IMP CAES TRAIAN AVG GER DAC P P REST C MAMIL LIME TAN, Mercury, Odysseus, and Argos
| Issuer | Roman Empire (27 BC - 395 AD) |
|---|---|
| Year | 98-117 |
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| Currency | Denarius, Reform of Augustus (27 BC – AD 215) |
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|---|---|
| Obverse script | Latin |
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| Reverse description | Odysseus (Ulysses) advancing to the right in traveller's attire — wearing a pileus cap and a short tunic, holding a staff — as his faithful dog Argos crouches before him in recognition. The scene faithfully reproduces the Homeric episode of Odysseus's return to Ithaca, originally depicted on the denarius of C. Mamilius Limetanus (circa 82 BC) and here reissued as a restitution coinage under Trajan. The circular legend surrounds the central type, separated by a beaded border, and the composition is executed in the characteristic hammered relief of late Republican prototype. |
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| Additional information |
This is a "restitution" issue — Trajan's deliberate revival of Republican-era coin types, struck to invoke Rome's ancestral coinage rather than contemporary designs. The series referenced older moneyers' work, in this case the Mamilia gens, whose original issues dated to the late Republic. Trajan's motivations were partly antiquarian, partly propagandistic: presenting himself as a restorer of Roman tradition at a moment when his Dacian campaigns were remaking the empire's eastern geography.
The Mamilia moneyer connection places the prototype somewhere in the first century BC, likely associated with C. Mamilius Limetanus, whose original denarius is dated to around 82 BC.