Extremely Rare Commodus “New Year” Medallion – TR P XVIII

Sale: Triton XIII, Lot: 324. Estimate $25000.  Closing Date: Monday, 4 January 2010.  Sold For $20100. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Commodus. AD 177-192. Bimetallic Medallion (63.85 g, 12h). Rome mint. Struck 10-31 December AD 192. L AELIVS • AVRELIVS • COMMODVS AVG PIVS FELIX, head of Commodus as Hercules left, wearing lion skin headdress tied at neck / HERCVLI ROMANO AVG P M TR P XVIII COS VII P P, Commodus as Hercules, nude, standing facing, head right, resting right hand on club set on ground, and left on left rear paw of corpse of Nemean Lion set on ground head first. Gnecchi 33/32 (obv./rev.); MIR 18, 1165-1/73; Banti 112/107 (obv./rev.); Grueber -; Froehner -; Tocci -; Dressel -; Toynbee, pp. 74-75. Good VF, untouched bi-colored patina with central section of black-green and outer ring of lighter green, minute traces of encrustation in some of the devices. An apparently unique die pairing in this extremely small issue, meant to celebrate the “New Year” of Commodus’s TR P XVIII.

During the latter part of his reign, Commodus began associating himself with Hercules. While the Antonine emperors had traditionally associated themselves with the divine hero, Commodus appropriated the iconography more aggressively by wearing a lion skin and carrying a club, both main attributes of Hercules, and having statues of himself dressed as the god erected throughout the empire (for a bust of Commodus as Hercules, see Capitoline bust [Inv. MC 1120]; for the use of Herculean images on provincial issues of Commodus, see http://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/). The appropriation of this imagery went to apparently megalomaniacal lengths. According to Dio (73.15), Commodus in AD 190 ordered that the names of the months be changed to correspond with his name and titles – Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus Augustus Herculeus Romanus Exsuperatorius Amazonius Invictus Felix Pius, and that each legion replace its epithet with Commodiana. Shortly thereafter, when fire had destroyed a large section of Rome, Commodus used it as an opportunity to re-found the city as a whole and, thereby, identify himself completely with Hercules, who was considered the founder of many ancient Greek cities. Commodus ordered the restored city to be called Colonia Lucia Annia Commodiana, its citizens were now know as Commodiani, and the Senate was restyled as the Senatus Commodianus Fortunatus. All of this revitalization on his part, Commodus believed, would bring about a new Golden Age. In the autumn of AD 192, Commodus officially adopted the name Hercules; it was at this time that his portrait on the coinage began to show him wearing a lion skin. This transformation was brief, however, for, on 31 December AD 192, only three weeks after assuming the tribunician power for the eighteenth time, he was assassinated by an athlete in his bath.

The coinage of Commodus dated TR P XVIII is virtually non existent (apart from a single recorded denarius and sestertius), indicating that the issue’s production had not yet gotten into full swing when Commodus was assassinated. The series of medallions, however, which forms a homogeneous group (based on the close die-links), and which totaled thirty-nine known specimens at the time Toynbee published her book, consists of six types. The obverses all show Commodus wearing the lion skin, while the reverses allude in some way to Hercules, who bears a distinct resemblance on some examples to the emperor. All are struck on bimetallic flans and, apart from the type showing the emperor plowing the pomerium, which was a medallic version of a very rare type struck earlier in AD 192, they are of a new type unknown to the regular coinage. These medals, unlike the similarly dated coinage, were meant to be ready for presentation to specific recipients within the government and the military on Commodus’ eighteenth tribunician anniversary, rather than on 1 January AD 193, at which time (or shortly thereafter) Commodus would have had the new consuls murdered and assume the consulship for himself (Dio 72.22). These medallions then were the preparation for what was to follow with the regular issues of coinage the following year: the transformation of Commodus into the physical manifestation of the god Hercules, the son of Jupiter, who would rule his empire from his capital city, which was populated by his people and governed through his Senate.