Constantine I To Jupiter Protector Of The Two Emperors

Constantine I the Great - Thessalonica circa AD 311-313​

This coin can be seen as part of a conciliatory gesture in a period of uneasy 'harmony' in the midst of one of the Roman Empire's most chaotic periods. Diocletian's establishment of the Tetrarchy had lasted only a short while before it ran into problems. Looking to the impending retirement of Diocletian and Maximian, the Caesar Galerius had ensured that Severus and Maximinus, men loyal to him, were made Caesares when he and his colleague Constantius Chlorus were to be elevated to Augusti, but when Constantius died in Eboracum in AD 306, his men elevated his son Constantine to the role of Augustus, bypassing the imperial colleagues. Galerius, now the senior emperor, compromised by recognising his old rival's son as Caesar instead, making Severus his co-Augustus. This legitimised ururpation prompted Maxentius, the son of the former Augustus Maximian, to also declare himself emperor.

In an attempt to deal with the chaos that the Tetrarchy had been thrown into by these developments, a conference was called at Carnuntum in the autumn of 308 to settle the question of who were legitimately to be the Augusti and Caesares. Ultimately, however, this conference failed to settle the distrust and spite now grown between the imperial colleagues. Galerius raised his friend and second-in-command Licinius beyond all the other figures there to the position of Augustus to replace the now-dead Severus, an act which enraged Maximinus against Galerius and Licinius - with destructive consequences in the long term - for he believed that he was next in line to the vacant position of Augustus. Maxentius was denied any sort of legitimate power, labelled simply as a usurper. Constantine, lastly, was re-affirmed as Caesar and ranked as junior to Maximinus by Galerius – ignoring and overriding Constantine's self-styling as Augustus in 307.

The result of this botched conference was further distrust and discord; much of it played out again in recognition of titles: Constantine's response to being named merely Caesar was to not recognise the consuls named by Galerius for the East in 309, for while they included him, they only styled him as Caesar, and similarly he did not recognise Galerius on his coinage at this time. To try to assuage Constantine and Maximinus' resentments at being snubbed, Galerius abolished the title of Caesar in 309 and named the pair filii Augustorum – 'sons of the Augusti'. This weak gesture did little to reconcile the group and after Maximinus simply assumed the title of Augustus in 310, Galerius recognised that it would be a matter of time before Constantine followed suit and grudgingly named him Augustus too. In 311, as a result of this, there was some harmony between the imperial colleagues, demonstrated by their recognition of Galerius' consulships for that year. Conflict flared again after Galerius' death when Maximinus, eager to assume control over his territories, mobilised his army against Licinius and invaded Asia Minor - an invasion defused by an awkward peace agreed between the two men, agreeing to split Galerius' lands between them across the Hellespont and Bosporus.

It is in this context of grudging peace between the three Augusti - Licinius, Constantine and Maximinus - in which so much [potentially disastrous] significance was ascribed to recognition of status, rank and title, that we must view our coin. Licinius had recently acquired the Mint of Thessalonica in the division of Galerius' lands, and it began then to issue coins of the present type in the name of all three Augusti, respectfully using the unabbreviated form Augustus on their obverse legends to explicitly recognise their rank and highlight their equal standing. Furthermore, it symbolically associated each Augustus with Jupiter on the reverse, a significant move considering the precedent set by Diocletian, who named himself Iovius [son of Jupiter] and reserved Jupiter symbolism for himself on the imperial coinage as a mark of his superior status over his colleague – Maximian Herculius, son of Hercules. Thus, the message of his new coinage from this mint was a conciliatory one, in which he, while technically being the senior Augustus, nevertheless recognised his equal footing with his colleagues - something particularly significant following the threatened war and restructuring subsequent to Galerius' death, and a sign of an attempt to rule together in peace after years of quarrelling over titles.