ANTONINUS PIUS & MARCUS AURELIUS Cyprus Mint LARGE Ancient Roman Coin i46372

Description

Item:
i46372
Authentic Ancient  Coin of:
Antoninus Pius
-
Roman Emperor
: 138-161 A.D.
Antoninus Pius & Marcus Aurelius
Bronze 31mm (21.30 grams) of Cyprus
Reference: Sear GIC 1523; B.M.C. 24.84,48
AVT. K. T. AI
Λ. AΔP. ANTΩNINOC CЄB. Є., Laureate  head of Antoninus Pius right.
M. AVPHΛIOC KAICAP VIOC CЄBAC, Bare-headed, draped and cuirassed bust of Murcus  Aurelius right.
You are bidding on the exact  item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime  Guarantee of Authenticity.
Marcus Aurelius
(
Latin
:
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
;  26 April 121 AD – 17 March 180 AD) was a
Roman Emperor
from 161 to 180. He ruled with
Lucius Verus
as co-emperor from 161 until Verus'  death in 169. He was the last of the
Five Good Emperors
, and is also considered one  of the most important
Stoic
philosophers.
During his reign, the
Empire
defeated a revitalized
Parthian Empire
in the East; Aurelius' general
Avidius Cassius
sacked the capital
Ctesiphon
in 164. In central Europe, Aurelius  fought the
Marcomanni
,
Quadi
, and
Sarmatians
with success during the
Marcomannic Wars
, with the threat of the
Germanic tribes
beginning to represent a  troubling reality for the Empire. A revolt in the East led by Avidius Cassius  failed to gain momentum and was suppressed immediately.
Marcus Aurelius'
Stoic
tome
Meditations
, written in Greek while on  campaign between 170 and 180, is still revered as a literary monument to a  philosophy of service and duty, describing how to find and preserve equanimity  in the midst of conflict by following nature as a source of guidance and  inspiration.
Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus
(19 September 86 – 7  March 161), generally known in English as
Antoninus Pius
was
Roman emperor
from 138 to 161. He was the fourth of the
Five Good Emperors
and a member of the
Aurelii
. He  did not possess the
sobriquet
"
Pius
" until after  his accession to the throne. Almost certainly, he earned the name "Pius" because  he compelled the
Senate
to deify his adoptive father
Hadrian
; the
Historia Augusta
, however, suggests that he may have earned the name by  saving senators sentenced to death by Hadrian in his later years.
//
He was the son and only child of
Titus Aurelius Fulvus
,
consul
in 89  whose family came from
Nemausus
(modern
Nîmes
)  and was born near
Lanuvium
and his mother was Arria Fadilla. Antoninus’ father and paternal grandfather  died when he was young and he was raised by
Gnaeus Arrius Antoninus
, his maternal grandfather, a man of integrity and  culture and a friend of
Pliny the Younger
. His mother married to Publius Julius Lupus (a man of  consular rank),
Suffect  Consul
in 98, and bore him a daughter called Julia Fadilla.
As a private citizen between 110 and 115, he married Annia Galeria
Faustina the Elder
. They had a very happy marriage. She was the daughter of  consul
Marcus Annius Verus
and
Rupilia
Faustina (a half-sister to Roman Empress
Vibia  Sabina
). Faustina was a beautiful woman, renowned for her wisdom. She spent  her whole life caring for the poor and assisting the most disadvantaged Romans.
Having filled with more than usual success the offices of
quaestor
and
praetor
,  he obtained the consulship in 120; he was next appointed by the Emperor
Hadrian
as  one of the four
proconsuls
to administer
Italia
, then greatly increased his reputation by his conduct as
proconsul
of
Asia
. He acquired much favor with the Emperor Hadrian, who adopted him as  his son and successor on 25 February, 138, after the death of his first adopted  son
Lucius Aelius
, on the condition that Antoninus would in turn adopt Marcus  Annius Verus, the son of his wife's brother, and Lucius, son of Aelius Verus,  who afterwards became the emperors
Marcus Aurelius
and
Lucius  Verus
(colleague of Marcus Aurelius).
Emperor
On his accession, Antoninus' name became "Imperator Caesar Titus Aelius  Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus Pontifex Maximus". One of his first acts as Emperor  was to persuade the
Senate
to grant divine honours to Hadrian, which they had at first refused; his efforts  to persuade the Senate to grant these honours is the most likely reason given  for his title of
Pius
(dutiful in affection; compare
pietas
). Two other reasons for this title are that he would support his  aged father-in-law with his hand at Senate meetings, and that he had saved those  men that Hadrian, during his period of ill-health, had condemned to death. He  built temples, theaters, and mausoleums, promoted the arts and sciences, and  bestowed honours and financial rewards upon the teachers of
rhetoric
and
philosophy
.
In marked contrast to his predecessors
Trajan
and
Hadrian
,  Antoninus was not a military man. One modern scholar has written "It is almost  certain not only that at no time in his life did he ever see, let alone command,  a Roman army, but that, throughout the twenty-three years of his reign, he never  went within five hundred miles of a legion".
[2]
His reign was the most peaceful in the entire history of the
Principate
;  while there were several military disturbances throughout the Empire in his  time, in
Mauretania
,
Iudaea
, and amongst the
Brigantes
in
Britannia
, none of them are considered serious. The unrest in Britannia is  believed to have led to the construction of the
Antonine Wall
from the
Firth of Forth
to the
Firth of Clyde
, although it was soon abandoned. He was virtually unique  among emperors in that he dealt with these crises without leaving Italy once  during his reign, but instead dealt with provincial matters of war and peace  through their governors or through imperial letters to the cities such as  Ephesus (of which some were publicly displayed). This style of government was  highly praised by his contemporaries and by later generations.
Of the public transactions of this period we have scant information, but, to  judge by what we possess, those twenty-two years were not remarkably eventful in  comparison to those before and after his; the surviving evidence is not complete  enough to determine whether we should interpret, with older scholars, that he  wisely curtailed the activities of the Roman Empire to a careful minimum, or  perhaps that he was uninterested in events away from Rome and
Italy
and his  inaction contributed to the pressing troubles that faced not only Marcus  Aurelius but also the emperors of the third century. German historian Ernst  Kornemann has had it in his Römische Geschichte [2 vols., ed. by H. Bengtson,  Stuttgart 1954] that the reign of Antoninus comprised "a succession of grossly  wasted opportunities," given the upheavals that were to come. There is more to  this argument, given that the Parthians in the East were themselves soon to make  no small amount of mischief after Antoninus' passing. Kornemann's brief is that  Antoninus might have waged preventive wars to head off these outsiders.
Scholars place Antoninus Pius as the leading candidate for fulfilling the  role as a friend of Rabbi
Judah  the Prince
. According to the
Talmud
(Avodah  Zarah 10a-b), Rabbi Judah was very wealthy and greatly revered in Rome. He had a  close friendship with "Antoninus", possibly Antoninus Pius,  who would consult Rabbi Judah on various worldly and spiritual matters.
After the longest reign since Augustus (surpassing
Tiberius
by  a couple of months), Antoninus died of fever at
Lorium
in
Etruria
,  about twelve miles (19 km) from Rome, on 7 March 161, giving the keynote to his  life in the last word that he uttered when the
tribune
of  the night-watch came to ask the password—"aequanimitas" (equanimity). His body  was placed in
Hadrian's mausoleum
, a
column
was dedicated to him on the
Campus Martius
, and the
temple
he had built in the Forum in 141 to his deified wife Faustina was  rededicated to the deified Faustina and the deified Antoninus.
Historiography
The only account of his life handed down to us is that of the
Augustan History
, an unreliable and mostly fabricated work. Antoninus is  unique among Roman emperors in that he has no other biographies. Historians have  therefore turned to public records for what details we know.
In  later scholarship
Antoninus in many ways was the ideal of the landed gentleman praised not only  by ancient Romans, but also by later scholars of classical history, such as
Edward Gibbon
or the author of the article on Antoninus Pius in the ninth  edition of the Encyclopedia Britannicaca:
A few months afterwards, on Hadrian's death, he was enthusiastically  welcomed to the throne by the Roman people, who, for once, were not  disappointed in their anticipation of a happy reign. For Antoninus came  to his new office with simple tastes, kindly disposition, extensive  experience, a well-trained intelligence and the sincerest desire for the  welfare of his subjects. Instead of plundering to support his  prodigality, he emptied his private treasury to assist distressed  provinces and cities, and everywhere exercised rigid economy (hence the  nickname κυμινοπριστης "cummin-splitter"). Instead of exaggerating into  treason whatever was susceptible of unfavorable interpretation, he  spurned the very conspiracies that were formed against him into  opportunities for demonstrating his clemency. Instead of stirring up  persecution against the Christians, he extended to them the strong hand  of his protection throughout the empire. Rather than give occasion to  that oppression which he regarded as inseparable from an emperor's  progress through his dominions, he was content to spend all the years of  his reign in Rome, or its neighborhood.
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