The reverse of a denarius of Septimius Severus showing Fides.

The reverse of a denarius of Septimius Severus showing Fides.

onus Eventus is an unusual type, and I started this page because I liked the look of the Septimius Severus denarii. Doesn't this look like a birthday cake with candles?

Bonus Eventus is the personification of a good outcome; an event with a bonus, perhaps, though "bonus" means "good" or "useful" in the Latin, and does not have the modern connotation of something extra. "Eventus" meant any happening or outcome. It seems that this personification, or genius, arose because any favourable event had to have a divine origin. In this way it was similar to Felicitas.

In particular, Bonus Eventus meant a good harvest, and was therefore a minor agricultural deity. There is a mixture of legends and images on coins which relate to this. Some show Fides, a female personification of confidence and good faith, and some show a male personification which is Bonus Eventus himself.

The reverse of a fourrée denarius of Hadrian showing Fides.

The reverse of a denarius of Elagabalus showing Bonus Eventus.

The two denarii at the top right are both of Septimius Severus, from the mint known as "Emesa" in 194 CE, at the start of his reign. The "BONVS EVENTVS" legend is accompanied by the image of Fides, carrying in her right hand a dish of fruits and trailing some corn ears behind her, grasped in her left hand. I included two of these denarii becauee of the difference in style. On the right-hand coin, fides looks elegant and aristocratic; on the other, she looks like a country housewife who has just baked a cake, with the oven gloves still dangling from her left hand.

On the far left is a fourrée denarius of Hadrian, with a silver coating over a base metal core. This shows the same image of Fides, this time with the legend FIDES PVBLICA, the Confidence of the People. Fides' image of a fruitful harvest showed rhe emperor keeping the faith of the people by being a good provider.

Next to it is a denarius of Elagabalus from 219-220 CE, this one minted in Antioch and showing an eastern style. Like the Septimius Severus denarii above, its legend is BONVS EVENTVS, and the nude male image is the one which is normally accepted as that personification. Instead of a dish of fruits, he is holding a patera above a flaming altar.

The reverse of a bronze coin of Commodus from Philippopolis showing Apollo.

(You can see from the long whiskers that these "corn ears" are barley. That's probably also true of the Septimius Severus coins above, but ears on the Hadrian coin could be barley or wheat. See also my page on the corn supply to Rome.)

The obverse of a Republican denarius of L. Scribonius Libo showing Bonus Eventus.

The nude figure of Bonus Eventus is very like Apollo, and on some provincial coins it is not so easy to tell them apart. The green coin on the left is a bronze of Commodus from Hadrianopolis. Although this has been documented as showing Bonus Eventus (for example, you can find this exact coin as such on the Wildwinds site under Moushmov 5182) it is pretty certainly Apollo. You can see that he is holding a branch instead of grain ears, which really completes the picture. There is more about Apollo and his laurel branch on my branches page.

The last coin, on the right, is a silver Republican denarius of L. Scribonius Libo from 250 years before the other coins on this page. Here you can see an earlier conception of Bonus Eventus, a handsome male head with a band about his forehead. This coin celebrates the Puteal of Libo, a garlanded wall which surrounded a pit containing a relic, and possibly also a place where lightning had struck. The tales of the origins of such ancient structures are sometimes more legendary than real.