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RESTITVTORI ACHAIAE - RESTITVTORI AFRICAE - RESTITVTORI ARABIAE - RESTITVTORI ASIAE - RESTITVTORI BITHYNIAE - RESTITVTORI GALLIAE - RESTITVTORI HISPANIAE - RESTITVTORI ITALIAE - RESTITVTORI LIBYAE - RESTITVTORI MACEDONIAE - RESTITVTORI MAVRETANIAE - RESTITVTORI NICOMEDIAE - RESTITVTORI PHRYGIAE - RESTITVTORI SICILIAE
These legends are all on coins of Hadrian, who travelled frequently over and surveyed with attention the different provinces of the Roman empire, inspecting the armies, embellishing the cities, and everywhere leaving marks of his liberality and munificence.
These manifold proofs of solicitude for the interests and prosperity of his subjects were typified on medals with a carefulness that seems to have anticipated the records of history, and in a variety of modes most suitable to the circumstances of his visits.
Sometimes the provinces are represented simply by a figure and some attributes as on a first brass inscribed AEGVPTOS, where a woman is seen seated on the ground, having at her feet the bird Ibis; sometimes the coins present themselves as monuments of his arrival and residence in these provinces, explained by the words ADVENTVI AUG; as for example MOESIAE, and with an analogous type, such as the emperor and the Genius of the province, standing opposite each other at an altar sacrificing; the Genius holding a patera and cornucopiae or a sceptre.
At other times we see the armies designated by their respective provinces in which they were stationed; and distinguished further by some type of allocution, as on the large brass EXERCITVS MAVRETANICVS, with the emperor on horseback and four soldiers on foot bearing military ensigns.
Next, we observe, as in the present case, that the emperor is termed the Restorer of a particular province, as in the large bronze medal dedicated by the Senate's decree, RESTITVTORI ACHAIAE, whereon Hadrian is represented extending his right hand to lift up a kneeling woman, an urn with a palm branch in it, standing in the midst. Or in that of RESTITVTORI HISPANIAE, where the
kneeling Genius has a rabbit at her foot. And lastly, to crown the climax of distiction, not unjustly due to the benefactor and re-establisher of so many components of a vast empire, we find a medal of the same size and metal, whose type exhibits Hadrian, in the imperial robe, raising from her posture of genuflexion a female figure, wearing a crown of towers [turreted] on her head, and holding a globe in her left hand; whilst the legend, in one emphatic title, desinates him Restitutor orbis terrarum, the Restorer of the (Roman) world.
By terrarum here, of course, is meant every land inhabited by towns and cultivated by a civilized rural population. Spartianus, in his Life of Hadrian, observes, "Nec quisquam fere principum tantum terrarum tam celeriter paragravit."
The suite of these geographical medals [Roman Provincial Bronze] (numi geographici), as Eckhel calls them, is considerable in point of number, and deservedly sought after by all collectors of taste and intelligence. Some of them are very rare; others are sufficiently common.