Commemorative Series of Constantine I. Urbs Roma AE follis, Siscia mint, c. AD

Commemorative Series of Constantine I. Urbs Roma AE follis, Siscia mint, c. AD 335-337 (RIC VII 240, R-4). 18.5 mm, 2.74 g. Obverse: legend VRBS ROMA, helmeted and mantled bust of Roma left. Reverse: she-wolf standing left, head turned right, suckling Romulus and Remus; three stars above; mintmark and officina •ΓSIS• in exergue. The strike is sharp, legends complete, and surfaces retain an attractive olive-green gloss, an unusually well-preserved specimen of this scarce Siscia issue.

Struck during Constantine’s last years, the Urbs Roma and companion Constantinopolis folles were more than tourist tokens: they advertised an empire now anchored by two symbolic capitals, the venerable Rome of the past and the Christian New Rome on the Bosporus. By honoring Roma with martial helmet and by reviving the myth of her lupine nurturer, Constantine clothed his dynastic propaganda in the reassuring garb of tradition, even as political gravity shifted eastward. Coins of Siscia, an important Danubian workshop feeding the frontier armies, are scarcer than those of western mints; in such mint-state condition they capture, as few artifacts do, the self-conscious blending of old and new that defined Constantine’s reign.