ROMAN REPUBLIC. Alliance issue. AR Denarius

ROMAN REPUBLIC. Alliance issue of L. Caecilius Metellus, A. Postumius Sp. f. Albinus & C. Mallius. AR Denarius (c. 18 mm, 3.0 g, 3 h). Rome, c. 118-115 BC.  Laureate head of Apollo right; behind, star; before, L·METEL; beneath chin, X (mark of value).

Rev. ROMA standing left on a pile of oval shields, holding spear in right hand and trophy-staff in left; in left field C·MAL; in right field A·ALB·S·F; border of dots.  Crawford 262/1; Sydenham 480; RSC Caecilia 14; Sear 611 (R2 – rare). Attractive mid-grey toning with lighter highlights, peripheral softness but legends complete and types clear.

This “alliance” denarius is remarkable because three moneyers, Lucius Caecilius Metellus, Aulus Postumius Albinus spuri filius, and Gaius Mallius, share the same coin, an arrangement found on only a handful of Republican issues. The design is an overt piece of family propaganda at the moment when Rome, fresh from the Numantine and Dalmatian wars and on the eve of the Jugurthine conflict, was again mobilising resources and public opinion for campaigns abroad. Apollo on the obverse alludes to the Caecilii Metelli, whose ancestor vowed a temple to the god after victory at Thermopylae (191 BC), while the reverse shows Roma erect on a pile of captured shields, brandishing a trophy-staff—a generic but instantly recognisable emblem of conquest that any of the three gentes could claim through distinguished forebears. Minted c. 118-115 BC, when bullion from the new Spanish mines was swelling the treasury, the piece illustrates how the monetary college could serve as a joint advertising platform for leading senatorial houses and, at the same time, broadcast Rome’s continuing military supremacy to an electorate increasingly attuned to visual messages in silver.