Heads and Busts on Roman Coins. Some Remarks on the Morphology of Numismatic Portraiture

Portraits were the standard obverse types of Roman imperial coins. Up to the mid-1st century AD, gender-specific morphological differences in the numismatic portraiture of emperors and their family members are in evidence. There were invariably portrait heads for the rulers, but draped portrait busts for imperial ladies. In this paper, the differences are analysed in detail and possible explanations are discussed. The imperial bust types are set in the context not only of Hellenistic royal coinages, but also of the heads and busts of gods and mortals appearing on Roman Republican coins – a tradition hitherto underexplored in scholarship.