Septimius Severus Joyous Times

The historical parallels between Augustus’ victories in civil war and those of Septimius Severus more than two centuries later were too obvious for the latter to ignore. The reverse of this type depicts the Ludi Saeculares held by Severus in AD 204 on the cycle employed by Augustus, exactly two hundred and twenty years after the games of 17 BC, which had been eulogised by Horace and ultimately celebrated the foundation of Rome. The historian Dio Cassius relates: The whole construction in the amphitheatre was made in the form of a ship, and was so conceived that 400 beasts might be received into it, and at the same time be sent forth from it. Then, when it suddenly collapsed there issued out of it bears, lionesses, panthers, lions, ostriches, wild asses and bison, so that seven hundred beasts, both wild and domesticated, were seen running about at the same time and were slaughtered [LXXVII, 4-5].

The presence of the charioteers on this coin are likely in reference to the circus races that Severus also held in commemoration of this occasion, along with gladiatorial games, and the distribution of a donative. From the meagre fragmentary remains of the fifty lined poem in hexameter by an unknown writer eulogising the Ludi Saeculares of 204, it can be inferred that by that date many contemporaries could reasonably believe that Septimius Severus, a second Augustus, had inaugurated a new Golden Age, a happy time: laetitia temporum.