Trajan AR Denarius. Restoration issue of P. Sulpicius Galba. Rome, AD 107. Veiled and draped bust of Vesta to right; S•C to left / IMP CAES TRAIAN AVG GER DAC P P REST, emblems of the pontificate: secespitae, simpulum, and axe; AE-CVR across fields, P•GALB in exergue. RIC II 789; Woytek 822; Komnick Type 23 (V1/R1); H. Mattingly, "The Restored Coins of Trajan," NumChron 1926, 19; RSC 19; for prototype, cf. Crawford 406/1; BMCRR Rome 3516-7; RSC Sulpicia 7. 2.82g, 19mm, 7h.

Good Very Fine; contact marks, slight crystallised. Extremely Rare; only one other example present on CoinArchives.

From a private UK collection.

Though 'restored' coinage was nothing new to the Romans in Trajan's time - they had made their first appearance under the Flavians, and been continued under Nerva - previous restorations had confined themselves only to the bronzes of certain well-remembered emperors. Trajan's great restoration, however, consisted entirely of aurei and denarii, and went much further, by restoring Republican types, and effectively inventing wholly new ones.

The occasion for this 'restitution' series issued under Trajan may have been the melting down of old coinage as mentioned in Cassius Dio (67.15), for Mattingly and Sydenham (RIC II, p. 303) proposed that "since the Romans regarded their coins with a certain amount of reverence as products of the Sacra Moneta it is not unnatural to conclude that they valued them also as historical monuments. The dominating trait in the character of Trajan was a desire to emphasise and expand the glory of Rome. It seems reasonable, therefore, to suggest that this was his motive for issuing the Restored Coins; and, by thus placing together a series of types illustrative of the development of Rome, Trajan may not ineptly be regarded as one of the first to recognize Numismatics as an aid to History."