Ancient Roman, Empire Orichalcum Coin pendant - Dupondio Vespasiano. (No reserve price)

Silver pendant with a dupondius from the 1st century AD of Emperor Vespasian. How did this unknown man rise to rule an empire and leave it better than he found it?

The thing is he identified those who had skills that would benefit him and gave them the opportunity that he himself had been denied for not belonging to the aristocracy. Vespasian was not educated, but he knew how to seize power in a year in which three emperors were proclaimed.

In fact, Titus Flavius Vespasianus (9–79 AD), from Falacrinum (Italy), a town that does not appear on maps, loved country life, spoke Latin and a bit of Greek with a rustic accent he never tried to correct, but he was shrewd and he was in a region famous for honest people, from which he had plenty of time to soak up that culture.

The truth is that his mother encouraged him to become a senator and his first opportunity came as a military tribune in Thrace in the year 36 AD, although three years later, as in charge of public works and sanitation, Caligula, upon seeing the dirty street, ordered that the stain be thrown onto the young Vespasian’s toga.

He had not fulfilled his task, he had bothered the emperor…

From here, Vespasian, who was always short of money because he had to fund his political career and feed three children, found himself with the right conditions to prosper. The advice of his lover Antonia Caenis, a freedwoman and secretary to Caligula’s grandmother, and that of his Greek freedman friend Narcissus, a court official, led him to:

✦ commander in the invasion of Britain (43 AD), where he had the luck to command Legio II Augusta and was awarded the ornamenta triumphalia;

✦ suffect consul (51 AD) only for the last two months of the year, a failed alternative, since he had fallen asleep at one of Nero’s recitals and that had offended the emperor;

✦ governor of Africa (63 AD), where, in order to obtain 1 million sesterces to maintain the position, he sold part of his properties; a moment he used to revive trade with mules, which earned him the nickname mulio (miller/ mule-driver).

And since he made more allies than riches, he seized the opportune gap left by high-ranking senators who had fallen out of favor with Nero, who was out of the equation along with Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, on December 26, 69 AD, with the support of 9 legions, Vespasian became the first non-aristocratic Roman emperor.

“Vespasian showed he was master of the situation. He restored Roman prestige and recovered its crushed finances.”

— Tacitus

And, of course, he did not execute any of his enemies and his first acts were:

• restore the army’s morale and dismiss opportunistic public officials;

• draft the Lex de Imperio Vespasiani (69–70 AD), a bronze-table law of 164 x 113 cm where for the first time the emperor is acknowledged and his limits set;

• reconstruct many of the houses and buildings burned in the last days of Vitellius;

• pay salaries to Latin and Greek teachers, in addition to rewarding poets and artists.

Meanwhile, to bring more money to the Roman treasury, Vespasian decided that it was the time to:

- Double provincial tributes.
- Sell pardons.
- Charge fees to candidates for public offices.

And as every challenge is a disguised opportunity and painters used the urine from public toilets to make the ammonia soap used for washing wool, he created the urine tax, from which dupondii of electrum like the one on this pendant were collected, minted in 71 AD at the Rome mint, note:

➤ on the obverse: Bust in profile of Vespasian, crowned, facing right. Legend: IMP CAES VESPASIAN AVG COS III (The Emperor and Supreme Commander Vespasian Augustus Consul for the third time);

➤ on the reverse: Rome seated to the left on a cuirass, wearing a crown and a parazonium; shields behind. Legend: S C to the left and right of the personification of Rome and at her feet the word ROMA.

Although to Titus, Vespasian’s son, that tribute seemed to diminish the prestige of the Roman people, until he let him smell a copper penny minted from the urine tax. He asked him if the coin smelled; he replied that it did not, hence the phrase:

“Pecunia non olet” (money does not stink).

Consequently, as emperor, he not only fixed Rome’s delicate economic situation but was able to carry out public works that endure two thousand years later: a business that generates wealth on the Italian peninsula, structures such as:

• The Temple of Peace (75 AD): The building was in a colonnaded square where Romans spent moments of calm between ponds with fountains surrounded by roses, looking at statues by sculptors such as Myron, Lysippos, etc., consulting works in the two libraries or praying in the small central chapel;

• The Flavian Amphitheatre (Colosseum): capacity of nearly 50,000 people, 72–80 AD, inaugurated by him and his son Titus;

• The statue of Apollo: although begun by Nero around 75 AD, Vespasian, as soon as he saw it was possible, swapped the head of a disliked emperor for that of the god Helios.

Until June 23, 79 AD, after leaving Rome better than he found it, he spoke his last words:

“Vae puto deus fio” (Alas, I think I am becoming a god).

Note that this is a timeless-designed pendant, with a witness piece from the early construction of the Rome Colosseum, which as a jewel gains value with time and naturally brings people to you to start a valuable conversation with you, something difficult with contemporary pieces.

Disclaimer: I’m sending you this object from Spain by certified mail with a tracking number. If you receive it in an area with a special tax regime, your local customs may hold it while you pay any duty, and that is beyond my control.