Faces Of Power Imperial Portraiture On Roman Coins Nicholson Museum by Nicholson Museum, Peter Brennan, Michael Turner, Nicholas L. Wright 9781864878332, 1864878339 instant download after payment.

This exhibition uses coins to reflect on some few of the millions of stories that make up the history of Roman emperors.It
stretches from the prototype emperor Julius Caesar to the last Roman
emperors in the West and their contemporaries in Constantinople.Coins,
like statues, give a physical face to power, sometimes realistic,
sometimes idealised, not only of emperors, but also of those whose faces
on coins show their importance in the physiognomy of power.

What
was shown on the coinage and what we now know happened in reality were
often very different, but the coin image expressed an idea that the
emperor wanted to be believed.During the
Roman Republic, and in the early days of Empire, the magistrate in
charge of the production of coinage would add his own name to the
legend. This practice does not seem to have continued on imperial
coinage after the reign of Augustus.

Octavian (Augustus) created a new praenomen for himself, Imperator, or 'victorious general'.During the reign of Nero, Imperator ('emperor') began to be used as the first name for all Roman rulers.After the cognomina, successive agnomina could be adopted to further identify individuals within a family.