Obverse: rightward bare-headed bust of the Emperor Hadrian, inscr. HADRIANVS AVG COS III PP.
Reverse: the goddess Felicitas shaking hands with a male, likely Hadrian, inscr. FELICITAS AVG.

On January 10, AD 128, the Emperor Hadrian was lauded before the Senate in a way that few Emperors had before: he was granted the title pater patriae, ‘Father of the Country’. Before the Imperial Period, this appellation had been granted only to Romulus, the founder of Rome, and to three Republican leaders – Marcus Furius Camilllus, who liberated the city after the Gallic invasion, the famous Marcus Tullius Cicero, who had supressed an attempted coup d’état, and Gaius Julius Caesar in the clamour to reward him following the end of the Civil Wars. For Emperors, the title came somewhat easier. Augustus, the founder of the Empire, was the first so honoured. So, too, were Emperors who had reunited the Empire in times of hardship, like Vespasian and Domitian. But an award of the title was not a marker of universal acclaim. Even reviled Emperors who met sticky ends, like Caligula and Nero, received it, usually as a result of handsome pay-packets to the army. Even the ineffectual and short-reigning Emperor Nerva was granted it, probably thanks to his populist policies and shameless courtship of the Senate. Hadrian’s award of pater patriae was similarly complex. Hadrian was never popular with the Roman elite. He had acceded to the throne under suspicious circumstances – the papers affirming his succession were not signed by his ailing and supposedly adoptive father, Trajan, but rather by Trajan’s scheming wife Plotina – and were it not for the support of the army, his early reign may well have ended in disaster. He was considered effeminate and too ‘foreign’ to adequately govern the Empire, mostly on the basis of his love for Greece and Egypt. The first Emperor in a century to sport a Greek-style beard, he was known as graeculus (‘the Greekling’) both as a term of affection and derision. His love for a boy, Antinous, and his apparent disinterest in his beguiling wife Vibia Sabina, reinforced notions of his lack of masculinity. When he strategically retreated from the newly-won provinces of Dacia and Mesopotamia, he was rebuked by the Senate for his lack of military acumen.

But the mood on the ground seems to have been somewhat better, and use of pater patriae can help us read the temperature of the populace. The first mention of the title comes on provincial coins, minted without the Emperor’s authority, before his return to Rome after succeeding in AD 117. The Historiae Augustae, an anonymous history of the Empire dating from Hadrian’s reign – and clearly written by a supporter – claims that the title was awarded to the Emperor immediately, and that he demurred out of modesty. While this is likely untrue from an official perspective, the mention of Hadrian as pater patriae on certain inscriptions from northern England around the time of the building of Hadrian’s wall, seems to indicate that it retained currency in the provinces for some time. The official grant of the title in AD 128 was almost certainly due to pressure from the army. Provincial inscriptions and coins show increasing use of the title from November of AD 127, even before the official grant by the Senate.

This little denarius, a silver coin that approximated to the daily wage of a legionary for most of Rome’s imperial history, is among the second or third issues to be associated with the title. Around a bare-headed bust of the Emperor – with his distinctive strong nose, firm jaw, piercing eyes, beard, and graecian curls – there is an inscription listing his titles, often in abbreviated fashion: Hadrianus augustus consulis III, pater patriae (‘Hadrian, the majestic [the title approximates to ‘Emperor’], Consul [essentially Prime Minister] three times, Father of the Country’). This inscription omits three important features usually associated with imperial coins: the title imperator, which originally meant a successful general, but eventually became a shorthand for ‘Emperor’, and which is the root of the English word; Caesar, the adoptive name of the Roman Imperial Family, which asserted a kind of fictive kinship with the first Emperor, Augustus, and his adoptive father Julius Caesar; and Traian, Hadrian’s own adoptive name, through which he asserted his claim to the throne. In omitting these titles, Hadrian demonstrates a kind of security on the throne which few could have imagined in his rocky early months.

The reverse depicts the goddess Felicitas, a symbolic protectress of Rome, and a personification of good luck or success. A saying adopted by the Roman Senate, and first used in Hadrian’s time, saluted new Emperors with the wish that they might ‘be as lucky and successful as Augustus, and as good as Trajan’. Hadrian clearly had quite an act to follow, stepping out from the shadow of his predecessor. While the detail of the reverse is quite worn, we can still clearly make out Felicitas to the right, wearing the stola, a kind of elegant Roman dress, which maintained both grace and modesty. In her right hand she holds the caduceus, a staff entwined with snakes, normally associated with the god Mercury, but which is referred to in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (Mercury’s Greek predecessor) as the ‘staff of felicity and riches’ (H.Merc. 529). She shakes hands with another figure, male and wearing a toga. The inscription accompanying this image reads FELICITAS AVG, and there is some argument over the correct interpretation. Some scholars read it felicitas augusti, ‘the happiness of the Emperor’, which could be taken to be an expression of good fortune directed to the Emperor himself, or else a reference to the happiness caused by the Emperor, i.e. the net benefit of his policies and personality. Alternatively, the inscription could be read Felicitas augusta, ‘the august goddess Felicitas’, in which case the inscription is merely a label for the female character. Either way, it is probable that the male figure is Hadrian himself.