Didius Julianus Denarius (AD 193) - A Coin That Bought an Empire

In the chaotic year of AD 193, Rome witnessed one of the most audacious events in imperial history: the auction of the throne itself. Following the assassination of Pertinax, the Praetorian Guard put the empire up for sale to the highest bidder. The winner? Marcus Didius Julianus, a wealthy senator who outbid his rivals with a promise of 25,000 sesterces per guardsman. His reign lasted a mere 66 days before he was deposed and executed by Septimius Severus. Yet, in that brief window, the Roman mint struck coins bearing his name including a silver denarius that captures the irony of his fleeting power. This particular denarius RIC IV 2 features an obverse with the laureate head of Didius Julianus facing right, inscribed IMP CAES M DID IVLIAN AVG ("Imperator Caesar Marcus Didius Julianus Augustus"). The reverse depicts Fortuna standing left, holding a rudder on globe in right hand and cornucopiae in left, with the legend P M TR P COS ("Pontifex Maximus, Tribunicia Potestas, Consul"), symbolizing the emperor's hoped-for stability and prosperity.

Obverse: The Emperor's Gaze

The portrait is classic Severan-era style: a mature man in his late 50s, with short-cropped hair and a neatly trimmed beard. The laurel wreath, symbol of victory and divine favor, crowns his head a bold claim for a ruler whose "victory" was won in a bidding war rather than on the battlefield. His eyes look resolutely right, toward the future he would never secure. The craftsmanship is hurried but competent; the mint workers, under pressure to legitimize the new regime, produced dies that reflect the transitional turmoil of the Year of the Five Emperors.

Reverse: Fortuna's Fleeting Favor

Fortuna, the goddess of luck and fate, dominates the reverse. She stands in a flowing chiton, her right hand gripping a rudder resting on a globe steering the ship of state and her left cradling a cornucopiae overflowing with fruits of abundance. This iconography was a standard appeal to divine providence, but on Julianus's coin, it rings hollow. Fortuna's wheel turns unpredictably, and for the man who purchased the purple, her favor proved as stable as sand. The type underscores Julianus's desperate bid for legitimacy. By invoking Fortuna, he aligned himself with emperors like Augustus and Trajan who had used her imagery to project continuity and good fortune. Yet history remembers him as a cautionary tale: pecunia regnat money rules, but only briefly.

Historical Context and Rarity

The denarius of Didius Julianus belongs to the Year of the Five Emperors (AD 193) a 12-month spiral of assassinations, civil war, and institutional collapse that exposed the rot at the heart of the Roman Principate. After Commodus’s murder on 31 December 192, the Praetorian Guard once the emperor’s shield became kingmaker and executioner. Pertinax lasted 87 days before they cut him down for refusing their extortion. In the power vacuum that followed, the Guard auctioned the empire from the ramparts of their camp, accepting sealed bids like merchants at a slave market. Didius Julianus, a rich but uninspiring senator, won with a promise of 25,000 sesterces per man roughly 10 years’ pay for a legionary. His 66-day reign was a farce of legitimacy. The Senate confirmed him under duress; the provinces rejected him outright. In Pannonia, Septimius Severus was hailed emperor by the Danube legions on 9 April. In Syria, Pescennius Niger followed suit. In Britain, Clodius Albinus waited. Julianus’s only real power lay in the mint: a frantic issue of aurei and denarii to pay donatives and propaganda. Dies were cut overnight; silver was clipped from earlier issues; portraits were stylized to mimic the Severan ideal even before Severus arrived. The Fortuna reverse rudder on globe was no accident: it echoed Pertinax’s own coinage, a desperate claim of continuity. When Severus entered Rome unopposed on 1 June, Julianus was abandoned even by his bodyguard. The Senate declared him hostis publicus; he was beheaded in the palace baths. Damnatio memoriae followed: statues smashed, inscriptions erased, coins recalled. Mints in Rome and elsewhere melted Julianus’s issues en masse to strike Severan types. Surviving denarii are thus condemnation survivors scarce, often porous or clipped, and almost never above Very Fine. The type’s iconographic stability Fortuna with rudder on globe links it directly to Pertinax (RIC 4a) and early Severus (RIC 1), showing mint continuity amid political rupture. Yet the portrait style evolves rapidly: early Julianus dies are cruder, later ones more refined—evidence of multiple engravers working under deadline. No hoards of Julianus denarii are known, suggesting immediate withdrawal from circulation. Most examples come from old European collections or stray finds in the Balkans, where Severan troops likely carried them before melting. In numismatic terms, RIC IV 2 is the signature denarius of the auctioned empire not rare like the patera variant (RIC 1 var.), but historically indispensable. It is the only coinage of a ruler whose entire reign fits between two Senate decrees: one granting him the purple, the other stripping it away.