Dupondius or As - Hadrian CLEMENTIA AVG COS III P P S C, Clementia

Hadrian's CLEMENTIA AVG coinage belongs to a deliberate propaganda program launched after the trauma of his accession in 117 AD, when four senior senators were executed — an act Hadrian blamed on Trajan's associates but which the Senate never fully forgave him for. Clemency, as a personified virtue on coinage, was a pointed political gesture toward that body. The COS III dating places this issue after 119, when he held the consulship for the third time, and the series continued through his extensive provincial tours of the empire.

RIC II.3 #1197 reflects the revised Spink corpus, which substantially reorganized and renumbered Hadrianic bronzes from the original RIC II — cross-referencing older catalog numbers is necessary for auction comparisons.