ABSTRACT
The Roman Republic never hesitated to propagate her warrior-state ideology and to publicize examples of her citizens’ bravery on the battlefi eld. In her coinage, numerous coin types show military themes, asses almost exclusively (the prora of a warship), and the earliest regular silver coinage is known as Victoriati. Besides common motives such as the goddess Victoria, the Dioscuri on horseback, or trophies, are more specifi c representations: battle scenes, vanquished enemies, captives, and particular historic reminiscences. 1 One silver denarius struck by the moneyer M. Sergius Silus in 116 BCE shows a horseman galloping, holding aloft his sword and an enemy’s severed head ( Figure 2.1 ). 2
Figure 2.1 Denarius (reverse) of M. Sergius Silus, Rome, 116-115 BC, 3,9 g, 18 mm, horseman galloping left, holding sword and severed head in his left (Crawf. 286/1, Syd. 534)
This remarkable public testimony of Roman valour and grimness – or, to the modern beholder, of cruelty and barbarism – highlights the Roman attitude towards warfare, enemies and, in part, violence in general. Not only coins appear to refl ect Roman ritualized violent behaviour. The res publica , in the course of her expansion that cost many hundreds of thousands of lives, developed various bloody public rituals. These were prominent in the military sector but were in fact distinctive of Roman society and public life as a whole – and they mostly concerned staged public killings in the public interest.
