Kathleen's Coin

Constantius II- c. 340 AD

Measurements- 1.5 cm diameter, 2.36 g

Obv.- DN CONSTANTINIUS PF AVG (Our Lord and Blessed Constantius Augustus)

Constanius II’s head, wearing diadem

Rev.- FEL TEMP REARATIO (The Restoration of Pleasant Times)

Large Roman soldier spears a falling horseman, probably a barbarian

Mint: Uncertain

Flavius Julius Constantius was born on 7 August 317 in Illyricum. He seems to have been made a Caesar on 13 November 324 in Nicomedeia. He married his first wife, also his second cousin, in Constantinople. When his father died in May 337, Constantius, who was campaigning in the east, rushed back to Constantinople and arranged for his father's obsequies. He may have been the force behind the murder of a large number of relatives and retainers in a purge. In the first part of September 337 Constantius II and his two brothers met in Pannonia where they were acclaimed Augusti by the army to divide up the empire among themselves. After his brother was killed in 350, Constantius obtained possession of his brother's realm. Although he appears to have been a competent general, some contemporaries felt that Constantius was a better soldier in civil wars than in foreign combat and some disparaged his apparent reluctance to face the Persians. One of the longest-reigned emperors in Roman history, Constantius is hard for the modern historian to fully understand both due to his own actions and due to the interests of the authors of primary sources for his reign.