Sestertius - Vespasian FORTVNAE REDVCI S C, Fortuna

Vespasian issued FORTVNAE REDVCI coinage — invoking Fortuna as the goddess of safe return — drawing on a tradition most associated with emperors returning from military campaigns or periods of dynastic crisis. By 76 AD, nearly seven years into his reign, the type carried a retrospective weight: Vespasian had emerged from the chaos of 69 AD, the Year of the Four Emperors, as the unlikely survivor of a succession crisis that killed three emperors in under eighteen months. RIC II.1 878 is a sestertius of the later Flavian consolidation, struck at Rome when the dynasty was secure but the memory of instability worth commemorating in bronze.