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Anonymous issues. temp. Hadrian–Antoninus Pius, 117-161 A.D.
Possible Annius Verus Portrait as Summer
Bronze Quadrans or Semis 16mm (2.37 grams)
Reference: RIC II, 34. Van Heesch 7.
Certification: NGC Ancients Ch AU
Strike: 5/5 Surface: 3/5 4934566-001
Juvenile head right wearing floral wreath and necklace; personification of Summer right (or some interpet as Annius Verus represented as Summer).
Large S • C within olive wreath.
This coin forms part of a group of quadrantes, all with infant heads on their obverses and SC within a wreath on the reverse. There are four different types, each identified as portraying one of the four seasons (the busts and wreaths are paired, and each type is adorned with specific fruits or grains, connoting different seasons of the year). This piece, with decoration of ripe grain, denotes Summer.
Mattingly originally assigned this type to the large number of anonymous quadrantes issued in the general period of the late first and early second centuries. He dismissed the assertion of Cohen, however, who gave it to Annius Verus, the deceased twin of the emperor Commodus. The presence of several consistent varieties of the type prompted Van Heesch to retain the Antonine attribution, but to identify the portraits instead as personifications of the seasons, representations of the abundance present in Rome’s “Golden Age.”
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 Marcus Annius Verus Caesar (born 162 or 163 AD) was the 12th of 13 children of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Empress Faustina the Younger. Annius was made caesar on 12 October 166 AD, alongside his brother Commodus, designating them co-heirs of the Roman Empire. Annius died on 10 September 169, at age seven, due to complications from a surgery to remove a tumor from under his ear. His death left Commodus as the sole heir.
Marcus Annius Verus was born in late 162 or 163 AD, the son of Marcus Aurelius and Faustina the Younger. He was given the name of Marcus Annius Verus because it was the original name of his father, Marcus Aurelius.
On 12 October 166 AD, during a triumph celebrating the victory of the Romans in the Parthian War of Lucius Verus, Annius and his elder brother Commodus were both made caesars, designating them as co-heirs to the Roman Empire. At the time, Annius was three, and Commodus was five. This was the first time such an explicit declaration of heirship had been made at such a young age, and showed a marked shift from the traditional cursus honorum, in which a presumed heir would be gradually raised through offices of increasing importance, in order to learn the skills of all positions, to a new system of imperial succession, wherein dynastic hereditary descent was the path to the throne, with heirs being instructed in how to be an emperor.
Annius died on 10 September 169 AD, at seven years of age, due to complications in removing a tumor from under his ear. This left Commodus as the sole heir. His father, Marcus Aurelius, mourned his death for just five days, while still continuing public work. Aurelius argued that because the games of Jupiter Optimus Maximus were ongoing, he should not interrupt them with his mourning. His lack of mourning was likely influenced by his Stoic philosophy, which taught of the dangers of emotion, and the brutal culture of the Romans, which considered hysterical grief at the loss of loved ones as unmanly and unnatural. Aurelius ordered statues to be made in his honor, and a golden image of him to be carried during the procession of the games. Aurelius also had his name inserted into the Carmen Saliare, the ritual songs sung by the Salii, a group of 12 priests.
Family
Annius Verus was the son of Marcus Aurelius and Faustina the Younger. Annius was the younger brother of, in order of birth: Domitia Faustina, Titus Aurelius Antoninus, Titus Aelius Aurelius, Annia Aurelia Galeria Lucilla, Annia Galeria Aurelia Faustina, Titus Aelius Antoninus, an unnamed son, Annia Aurelia Fadilla, Annia Cornificia Faustina Minor, Titus Aurelius Fulvus Antoninus and Lucius Aurelius Commodus Antoninus (Commodus). Annius was the older brother of Hadrianus and Vibia Aurelia Sabina.
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