Currency was a powerful aqueduct by which the Roman Empire circulated its propaganda far and wide. Because they were produced in the billions, coins are one form of artifact employed in that effort that can never be entirely lost to history. Mini-billboards and bumper stickers jingling in the pockets of the populace from one end of the Empire to the other while transacting the very business of life, coins allowed Romans to advertise the prosperity and peace they brought to the world—the Pax Romana—by proclaiming it right on their money.
Mediterranean rulers used coinage as propaganda for centuries before the Romans, and the Romans were close students of the methods employed by previous rulers. They advanced the use of coins to new heights as a medium for transmitting the self-image and ideology Rome wished to sell to the world. With the advent of empire, Roman propaganda asserted imperial divinity or divine approval for their rule, a project that often entailed affiliating the emperor with official Roman state deities and gods local to certain territories, as well as encouraging the worship of some deceased emperors as gods—precisely the kind of graven images forbidden by Jewish law. In an age when there was no division between politics and religion, the success of Rome was depicted as the result of divine favor and the sanction of the gods made manifest. Coins were a direct way to spread that message.
Not only Rome’s legendary founder Romulus, but also the later founders of Rome’s first imperial dynasty, Julius and Augustus Caesar, were officially deified (made gods), complete with their own cults, temples, and highly organized priesthoods. This deification was proudly celebrated on Roman coins. Soon, an emperor, Caligula, would even seek deification during his lifetime, although this stimulated a degree of resistance (though not in the farther-flung parts of the Empire). Caligula even attempted to place a statue of himself as a god in the Jewish Temple itself—setting off such a violent reaction among Jews that he was forced to scuttle the project. (4)
After an emperor’s death, however, it was so commonplace for them to be deified by the time of the Flavians that on his deathbed Vespasian supposedly quipped: “Dear me! I must be turning into a god.” (5)
Outside the city of Rome, especially in the east where many people were used to worshipping rulers as divine, Roman emperors were worshiped as gods while they were still alive as early as the reign of Augustus. Inside the city of Rome, however, where that was still a brick too far, emperors commonly associated themselves with favored divinities believed to bring order and good fortune to the world.
In the 1st Century, Greek and Roman Stoic philosophies were a major influence on the ideology that was associated with Rome’s state deities. Stoics saw history as a continuous cycle of death and renewal that was driven by “Fortuna” (destiny) and “Logos” (the divine). Benevolently, these forces always provided humanity with a “Soter” (a savior) who could turn chaos and struggle into a new order of pax and salus (peace and health or safety).
The ancient idea of a “Soter” came to be identified with the god Apollo, a solar deity connected with healing, and, later also with another sun god, Sol Invictus. (6) In this context, the first emperor, Augustus, was seen as a messianic figure who had established a new "golden age"—the Pax Augusta—from the chaos of the civil wars preceding his rule after Julius Caesar’s assassination. (7)
Augustus’s great-uncle and adoptive father, the dictator Julius Caesar, was officially deified by the Senate shortly after his murder. This made Augustus a “son of the divine” or “Son of God.” Augustus’s coinage links his imperial cult with this divine imagery, as on this coin where we find the legend “DiviF”, an abbreviation of divi filius, which means “son of god”:
Augustus, “Son of God”
The dolphin, as we have seen, had long been a divine pagan symbol. It was sacred to at least three pagan divinities: Apollo, Venus (Aphrodite), and Neptune (Poseidon), who governed the seas. All three deities made good symbols for a Roman emperor. Venus was said to be the legendary ancestress of the founders of the first imperial dynasty, the deified Julius Caesar and his heir, Augustus. Neptune, of course, “ruled the seas,” and Romans had conquered the Mediterranean and made it their own private lake. Like Seleucus, Augustus’s cult also claimed him to be a son of Apollo, by a niece of the Divine Julius. (8)
Later emperors such as Vitellius imitated Augustus by adopting Apollo’s symbols. Apollo made a good affiliation for the Flavian emperors, as well, since he was linked to previous dynastic emperors like Augustus. As founders of the dynasty that followed the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the Flavians quite naturally used them as a model—just as Augustus found a model in the Hellenistic precedents of rulers who followed Alexander the Great, like the Seleucids and the Ptolemys of Egypt, and as Hadrian would find a model in the first Roman conqueror of Judea, Titus.
Since the Flavians, like Augustus, also ended a destructive civil war (68-69 CE), they, too, were eager to represent themselves as healers—like the healer god Apollo. The Roman civil war and the Jewish War provided Vespasian with a compelling reason to be seen as a new Divine Augustus and a new Divine Julius, both pacifier and healer and a patron of a new Roman era of peace and prosperity after violent upheaval.
In addition, the Flavian dynasty had gained empire through their victories in the east. Vespasian was even named emperor while he was still commanding the legions in Judea. This provides yet a further explanation for why the Flavians would adopt solar god symbols on their coins. Hailing from the east, like the sun that rises in the east, the Flavians could naturally be associated with solar deities like Apollo. One omen portending Vespasian’s future imperial rule was a statue of the deified Julius Caesar that supposedly swiveled on its base and faced east, where Vespasian waged war in Judea. (9) Tacitus mentions the same event as foretelling the fall of Vitellius, Vespasian’s rival for the throne back home in Italy, whose death paved Vespasian’s way to the throne. (10)
Here is an example of a coin issued by Vespasian’s son, Titus, with himself on one side and a statue of the sun god Sol or Helios on the other:
Titus and the Sun God
Titus, Vespasian’s son, had practically become co-emperor after prosecuting the Jewish War with his father. Titus is reported to have been born on December 30. (11) Solar deities usually celebrated their “births” at the end of December. The Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year and the longest night. A year is measured by the movements of the sun, and the sun may be said to reach “maturity” at the Summer Solstice only to be reborn during the Winter Solstice at the end of December when the days begin to grow longer again. So Titus’s birth date provides another link to sun gods like Apollo or the Persian god Mithra, who was born on December 25, just as western Christian tradition celebrates the birth of Christ. In the eastern side of the Empire, Christmas is still celebrated on January 6. Thus, the birth of Titus occurred right in the middle of the famous “Twelve Days of Christmas.”
“Christmas” celebrations may have begun only centuries later, but the relatively early association of Jesus’s birth with solar deities like Apollo and the earlier Christian choice of dolphin symbols associated with Apollo are worth noting as we continue.