Trajan Decius. AD 249-251. Æ Sestertius (27.5mm, 19.22 g, 12h). Rome mint, 2nd officina. 4th emission, AD 250. Laureate and cuirassed bust right / Genius of the armies of Illyricum standing left, holding patera and cornucopia; signum to right. RIC IV 117a; Banti 12. Dark green patina with traces of green, some light smoothing and minor tooling. VF.
Ex Grand Haven Collection.
Born in an obscure provincial city on the Danubian frontier, Gaius Messius Quintus Decius gained entrance to the Roman elite via his marriage to Herennia Etruscilla, descended from a noble Etruscan family. Decius rapidly rose to a series of important positions, where earned a reputation as an old-fashioned disciplinarian who revered Roman institutions. In AD 248-249, when the Emperor Philip I faced a series of revolts, Decius convinced him not to abdicate. Philip instead placed Decius at the head of an army sent to the Danubian front to deal with usurpers and Gothic invaders. With these tasks accomplished by June of AD 249, Decius’s soldiers proclaimed him emperor, against his wishes (or so he claimed). His army defeated Philip in battle near Verona in September and entered Rome the following month. The Senate enthusiastically approved his elevation and gave him the additional name of Trajan in honor of the great second-century emperor. He appointed his sons Herennius Etruscus and Hostilian as Caesars and named his wife Augusta. Decius seems to have come to the throne with a ready-made agenda for the restoration of Rome’s fading glory. Christianity was particularly singled out, and thousands of Christians were forced to either make sacrifice to Rome’s gods or face execution. Renewed barbarian invasions late in AD 250 took his attention away from domestic affairs. Seeking a decisive battle, Decius pursued the Goths into the marshes of Abrittus and straight into an ambush. Decius, Herennius and about half of their army perished in the debacle, the first time a Roman emperor had fallen to a foreign enemy. The Christians claimed it was God’s revenge on an arch-persecutor. This sestertius, struck in AD 250, celebrates the “Genius of the Armies of Illyricum,” the region from which he sprang. Future emperors from the same region would rescue the Empire from the Third Century crisis that his regime failed to contain.
