★ Sol and the East ★

Trajan AV Aureus. Rome, AD 116-117. IMP CAES NER TRAIAN OPTIM AVG GERM DAC, laureate, draped and cuirassed bust to right / PARTHICO P M TR P COS VI P P S P Q R, radiate and draped bust of Sol to right. RIC II 329; BMCRE 621-623; Woytek 572f; BN 880-882; Biaggi 499; Calicó 1038. 7.18g, 19mm, 6h.

Good Extremely Fine.

While it is very likely that the Romans, like many other cultures, had a reverence for the sun from the earliest of times, the 'official' cult of the sun-god, Sol Indiges, did not have a very high profile initially. According to Roman sources, the worship of Sol was introduced by Titus Tatius. A shrine to Sol stood on the banks of the Numicius, near many important shrines of early Latin religion. In Rome itself Sol had an 'old' temple in the Circus Maximus according to Tacitus, and this temple remained important in the first three centuries AD. Sol also had an old shrine on the Quirinal Hill where an annual sacrifice was offered on August 9. Romans were therefore well acquainted with the concept of a sun god, though his appearance on coinage was infrequent; it would require an Eastern revival of the cult to bring it to prominence.

It is known that by AD 158 the cult of Sol Invictus was established at Rome, as evidenced by a votive military inscription (see Campbell, 1994, The Roman Army, 31 BC-AD 337: A Sourcebook, p. 43 and Halsberghe, 1972, The Cult of Sol Invictus, p. 45), however Rome's first contact with the Syrian cult that would come to worship the sun under this name probably occurred sometime during the reign of Hadrian, whose Eastern connections led to an intensification of relations with the Eastern provinces of the empire. Hadrian had accompanied Trajan on all his campaigns in Dacia and the East, and had been appointed legate of Syria, and remained there to guard the Roman frontiers as Trajan, now seriously ill, returned to Rome.

Sol appears on the coinage of Trajan where the type is used as a deliberate and obvious reference to his campaign of conquest in the East. Sol also appears early on in the coinage of Hadrian's reign, personifying the East more explicitly still with the inscription ORIENS below the portrait, doubtless representing not only a continuation of Trajan's legacy but also an indirect reference to the emperor himself who, like the sun, had risen to power in the east.