77 | Roman Empire

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NERO. Sesterce. (Ae. 26.66g / 35mm). 65 AD Lugdunum. Anv: NERO CLAVD CAESAR AVG GER PM TR P IMP P P. Laureate bust to the right of Nero. Rev: CONG DAT POP. Nero seated on the platform, in front of the officer offering congiarum to a citizen on the stairs with a child behind, in the background Minerva holding an owl and spear next to Libertas holding Tesera. (RIC 434). VF. Retouched obverse. Very rare specimen.

Suetonius says that "Nero was born in Anzio, nine months after the death of Tiberius, on the 18th of the calends of January at sunrise." The last emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and one of the Roman emperors with the worst “press” in the entire history of the Empire. Persecutions on Christians, burning of Rome in 64 AD, various murders, among them that of his British brother or his mother Agrippina, are some of the accusations that history has traditionally launched against him. Good guilt for this fame comes from the writings of contemporary and / or later historians such as the aforementioned Suetonius, Tacitus or Dion Cassius who presented the emperor as a true tyrant. It should be noted that this traditional and simple interpretation has been and is currently being questioned, or at least, there is a current that also presents us with another aspect of the figure of the emperor, that of a leader loved by the popular classes, concerned for culture, the arts or sports events.
From a strictly economic or numismatic point of view, under the government of Nero a major monetary reform was carried out in AD 64 that aimed to expand the nominal supply of money to avoid the insolvency of the state. Basically its reform focused on reducing the theoretical weight of both the golden and the denarius, as well as the purity of the latter and putting the subsidiary denominations in orichalcum into circulation. This last measure was abandoned shortly thereafter as this type of coin was never accepted by the people, but the first two remained and survived through the years.
Regarding the style of the portraits coined in the different pieces, these evolve, in a clear process of artistic realism, from that of a young man, already obese, and laureate with a civic crown, to that of an adult with harsh features in recent years of reign.