Denarius - Titus TR P IX IMP XV COS VIII P P

This denarius falls within Titus's ninth tribunician power, a dating bracket that places it firmly in 80 AD — the year the Flavian Amphitheatre opened and Vesuvius's destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum was still less than a year old. The fifteenth imperatorial acclamation recorded in the obverse legend reflects military salutations that were, by this period, increasingly ceremonial rather than earned in the field; Titus himself had not commanded armies since the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD. His reign lasted only twenty-six months total.