Ancient CoinsByzantine CoinsRoman Coins
The Emperor God
The Emperor God… the reason for the name
Why was the emperor called a god?
During the Roman Republic, the deification of rulers was unthinkable, but after the expansion eastward and the rise of Roman Empire After Octavian became Augustus Caesar, the situation changed. The same thing had happened previously with the Greeks. Before Alexander the Great’s expansions towards the East, the idea of deifying the ruler was not present according to the prevailing systems of government. But after Alexander and throughout the entire Hellenistic period, the earth was teeming with god-rulers. Perhaps the origin of that idea was Eastern, perhaps Egyptian, perhaps Iraqi, and perhaps others.
Here we present a silver coin of the tetradrachm category struck in the city of Byzantium, the city whose geography has made it one of the cities whose name has changed the most throughout history, as it is Byzantium, Constantinople, and Istanbul. This coin was struck at the beginning of the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, but it bears the faces of his two deified parents.
On the front we see a profile portrait of the former emperor Augustus Caesar, and in the margin is written in Greek.
ΣΕΒΑΣΤΟΣ ΘΕΟΣ
It means "divine emperor".”
On the back we see a profile portrait of the former Empress Livia, with Greek writing in the margin.
ΘΕΑ ΣΕΒΑΣΤΑ
It means "the goddess empress"”
As we can see below, there are three letters ΒΥΖ, which is an abbreviation of the city's name in Greek, “ΒΥΖΑΝΤΙΟΝ”.”
During the Roman Empire, this Eastern belief would become firmly established, and many coins would be minted commemorating former emperors as gods, thus documenting an important aspect of the cultures, beliefs, and systems of that period in history…
* The item pictured is on display in British Museum London
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