Sestertius - Hadrian CLEMENTIA AVG P P COS III S C, Clementia

Hadrian's CLEMENTIA coinage belongs to a broader programmatic series issued in the late 120s celebrating imperial virtues — not as propaganda in the crude sense, but as a deliberate philosophical statement from an emperor who had personally toured the provinces and styled himself a ruler by consent rather than conquest. Clementia, the quality of merciful restraint, carried specific weight after Hadrian's accession in 117 AD, when four senior senators were executed — an episode that haunted his reign and which he persistently tried to distance himself from publicly.

RIC II.3 1140 falls within the third consulship group, placing it firmly after his return from the eastern provinces.