ABSTRACT
At a time of confrontation between the Roman armies under Emperor Gratian's leadership against the Alamanians, Goths, Alans, and Sarmatians, this august emperor ordered the minting of coins to validate his power in the Empire and gain support from his subjects. In this article, I analyze the speeches promoted in three of these coins, which belong to the collection of the National History Museum of Rio de Janeiro (MHN-RJ), identified as 163968, 163979 and 163987. To analyze such documents, I photographed them and created informative tables for each one of them. Finally, from examinations of numismatics, from my readings in specialized literature and other ancient documents, I proceeded with documentary interpretation. I have observed that the values emphasized in these coins, among them “glory” and “concord”, emphasized the abilities of Gratian as a military man and leader of the Romans, thus propagating the opinion that this emperor was necessary to his society.
Keywords
Emperor Gratian; coins; glory; concord; virtues
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