Sestertius - Vespasian PAX AVGVSTI S C, Pax

The PAX AVGVSTI sestertii of Vespasian belong to the ideological reconstruction following the Year of the Four Emperors and the Jewish War — Rome's most catastrophic sequence of internal violence since the civil wars of the late Republic. Vespasian needed the peace message badly; he had taken power through force, not succession, and his legitimacy rested partly on convincing the senate and public that the convulsions of 68–69 AD were finished. RIC II.1 380 falls in the consolidated emission of 72–73, by which point the Flavian hold on the principate had stabilized enough that the propaganda was less urgent than in the immediately post-war issues.