As of Antoninus Pius c. 138 - 161

Curator: Oh, it's ancient, worn smooth, like a memory held too long, you know? Editor: This is a coin, simply titled "As of Antoninus Pius," currently residing at the Harvard Art Museums. It presents a fascinating intersection of power, economics, and symbolic representation in ancient Rome. Curator: The green patina whispers stories of burial and recovery, doesn't it? Makes you wonder whose pocket it warmed, what transactions it fueled... Editor: Indeed, and the portrait of Antoninus Pius himself becomes a site where imperial authority is both asserted and scrutinized through the lens of history. Its smallness belies its significance, as a tool of state power made accessible to the masses. Curator: I love how time transforms even emperors into abstract forms. What remains is a ghost of ambition. Editor: Absolutely, and that tension between the individual and the institutional, the intimate and the monumental, is what makes this coin an object of enduring fascination.