SALVS ET GLORIA ROMANORVM

Latin: Salvation and Glory of the Romans.

DICTIONARY OF ROMAN COINS

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   SALVS ET GLORIA ROMANORVM.----
This magniloquent legend appears on a gold medallion of Justinian, described by Akerman, after Eckhel and Mionnet, as unique.----The
type of the reverse represents the Emperor on horseback, his helmet adorned with the nimbus, and holding a spear in the right hand. Before
him goes Victory, bearing a trophy on her left shoulder, and pointing the way with her right hand. In the exergue, CONOB.----On the obverse is the bust of the Emperor, helmeted and
nimbed: he holds a spear before him in his
right hand, and bears a shield cast behind his shoulder.
   Distinguished not only by its unique character, but also by its unusual volume and weight (for, according to Eckhel), it equals five ounces and nearly three drachms, and Mionnet gives its diameter as 38 lines (French measure), this splendid coin was found in the year 1751, near Caesarea ad Argaeum (Mazaca), formerly the capital of Cappadocia, amongst some rubbish
in the foundations of an old building, cast out
from the depth of twenty feet underground, and having been presented to Louis XV., is now an illustrious ornament of the Royal collection at Paris.
     " With respect (says Eckhel) to this and other
coins of Justinian inscribed GLORIA ROMANORVM,
Cedrenus affirms that that Emperor delighted so
much in the warlike virtues of Belisarius, that
he caused a medal to be engraved with his own
effigy on one side, and that of Belisarius armed
on the other, and near it to be written BELISARIVS
GLORIA ROMANORVM. No similar coin,
with the name of Belisarius expressed thereon,
has yet been found, if you pass by that which
Ducange quotes from the cabinet of Peter
Gyllius, but which I suspect to be counterfeit.--
It was possible, however, to happen that money
of one kind or other, such as we have just
described, had met Cedrenus's observation, with
the epigraph GLORIA ROMANORVM, and that he
thought Belisarius appeared on their reverse.
And, so many enemies of the empire being
vanquished, Justinianus no doubt thought that
this Glory of the Romans constituted his own
also, for he is found assigning to himself a crowd
of surnames taken from conquered nations --
Alemanici, Gotthici, Francici, Germanici,
Antici, Alanici, Vandalici, Africani, as they
are read in various laws made by himself, and
indeed written in the preface to his Institutes ;
and they appear also in the same order on a Greek marble edited by Muratori, although he evidently used some of them too much by anticipation. "

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