Sestertius - Hadrian COS III P P FORT RED S C, Fortuna

Hadrian's "Fortuna Redux" — Fortuna the Returner — was invoked on this issue to mark his return to Rome following years of provincial tours that had taken him through Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, and the Danube frontier. These journeys, unprecedented in scale for a sitting emperor, generated an enormous surge of commemorative coinage between 128 and 130 AD, much of it catalogued under his third consulship. The Senate's role in authorizing the SC bronze issues meant these pieces carried explicit political endorsement of Hadrian's itinerant style of rule, which not everyone in Rome welcomed.