Roman Imperial Virtues

In an empire as large as and with as many different peoples as the Roman Empire, creating unity through shared ideals and culture was an important part of imperial policy. At no time in Roman history was this more important than during the period known as the Crisis of the Third Century. The crisis began when the last member of the Severan dynasty, Severus Alexander, died without an heir in 235 CE and lasted until the reign of Diocletian in 284 CE. A combination of foreign invasions, civil war, inflation, famine, political instability, and plague led to an environment where there were often multiple emperors ruling different regions of the empire at the same time. 

Emperors attempted to create unity through the imperial cult of the virtues, which personified both the emperors’ ethical qualities and the benefits of his rule. Coins were just one of the ways emperors propagated the cult of the virtues, as nearly every citizen of the empire dealt with currency to some degree. There were eleven personified virtues and seventeen personified benefits used on coinage and every emperor chose to use or ignore these types based on the image they wanted to project to the people. Using coins in the Museum of Antiquities collection and others, Roman Imperial Virtues and the Third Century Crisis examines six emperors who reigned during the crisis years and looks at how they used the cult of the virtues to define and shape their public image in the minds of the people they ruled.