A coin of
Trebonianus Gallus recently added to my
gallery:
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-156185This is an historically important coin.
In
his book
The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, & the End of an Empire, author Kyle Harper suggests the plague described by Cyprian,
Bishop of
Carthage, was not a localized plague of some sort, but was one and the same with the plague that ravaged the
Roman Empire during the reign of
Trebonianus Gallus and several of
his successors.
The plague was first reported in
Alexandria in 249 AD, and by 251 AD it
had made its way to
Rome where the boy emperor
Hostilian died from it. Harper says (p, 138), “The Plague of Cyprian is in the background of imperial
history from ca. AD 249 to AD 262, possibly with even later effects around AD 270.”
Harper also presents a case that the plague was either pandemic influenza (similar to that of 1918) or a viral hemorrhagic fever (similar to the Ebola virus of today).
Coins with the
reverse legend APOLL SALVTARI (“
Apollo the Healer”) exist on coins of
Trebonianus Gallus,
Volusian,
Aemilian, and
Valerian I. This
reverse type is certainly to be interpreted as an appeal to
Apollo for deliverance from the plague that was spreading through the Empire at this time.
(The above-mentioned book has been discussed elsewhere on this website. If you haven't read it, you are missing a
good one. One online reviewer says of it, "
The Fate of Rome is the book every scholar wants to write once during
his or her career.")
