THE FLAVIAN DYNASTY

As the winner in the civil war, Vespasian proved to be an able ruler under whom the Roman Empire prospered. He established the short-lived Flavian dynasty, consisting of himself and his sons, Titus and Domitian. The dynasty ended when Domitian turned bad and was murdered in a plot involving his wife.

For the coins of the Flavian dynasty, for each Emperor we will be listing the coin in a sequence that better reflects their historical context, rather than the more traditional alphabetical order most reference books use. This hopefully will give a better feeling of what the coins really represent.

DOMITIAN, AD 81-96

MINERVA SERIES

In AD 83, Domitian introduced a series of coins devoted to Minerva, his personal patron goddess, depicted in four distinctly different stances :

	Minerva standing left, holding spear and resting her hand on her right hip.
	Minerva standing left, holding spear and a thunderbolt, with a shield at her feet.
	Minerva standing right on the ground, holding shield and brandishing a spear.
	Minerva standing right on a gallery, holding a shield and brandishing a spear, with a small owl standing at her feet.

Each coin gives his TRP number on the obverse and generally his Imperator and Consulship numbers on the reverse, so can be easily dated to the exact year of issue. The series was struck right up to his death in 96 AD.

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