Odovacar. King, 476-493. Tessera Monumentorum (Bronze with raised Silver band, 20x15 mm, 4.20 g, 6 h), Q. Aurelius Memmius Symmachus, praefectus urbi. SALVO / DOMNO / NOSTRO in three lines inscribed on raised silver band. Rev. SIMMACHVS/ V C PRAEFS / VRBI FECIT in three lines inscribed on raised silver band. Unpublished and unique, a fascinating piece issued under the famous first Germanic King of Italy and naming the highly influential Q. Aurelius Memmius Symmachus. Good very fine.


The urban prefect of Rome named on this tessera monumentorum is most likely Q. Aurelius Memmius Symmachus. His prefecture is attested by a unique tessera naming Zeno (476-491) and Odovacar (476-493) (Kulikowski, Prefects, A8), and can therefore be placed in the years 476-491. The legend SALVO DOMNO NOSTRO ('under our lord, safe and sound') should here be taken to refer to Odovacar: on the parallel tessera the formula is explicit - SALVO D N ZENONE ET DOMNO ODOVACRE - styling Zeno with the imperial dominus noster (D N) while giving Odovacar only domno. The absence of D N on the present piece thus points to Odovacar as the implied 'our lord,' rather than the Augustus.

Odovacar, the Germanic commander, removed Orestes in 476 and deposed his son Romulus 'Augustulus,' the last Western Roman emperor. Proclaiming himself rex (king), he sent the imperial insignia to Constantinople and declared that the West no longer required its own Augustus. Yet in the eyes of contemporaries this was not Italy’s secession from the Empire. Rather, Odovacar presented his rule as a direct subordination to the Eastern Augustus - a stance reflected in his gold coinage, which continued to be issued in Zeno’s name. Against that backdrop, our tessera is especially revealing. While coins and other tesserae name the Eastern Augustus, this piece invokes only an implicit domno nostro - a telling indication of the rex’s dominance in Italy.

Symmachus belongs to the senatorial elite of Rome that not only survived this transition but remained central to government. As praefectus urbi he headed Rome’s civic administration, embodying the continuity of Roman office under new rulers. He is attested as consul in 485 under Odoacer and later held the rank of patricius under Theoderic 'the Great'. In other words, he remained at the top of the senatorial establishment across regimes, and appears to have negotiated the transition from Odoacer to Theoderic without loss of standing. Symmachus was also a cultural patron of the 'old' aristocracy, credited with a lost Historia Romana in seven books, and he is best known as the father-in-law and supporter of the famous philosopher Boethius. In the crisis of the 520s, however, that proximity to power proved dangerous: he was arrested and executed in 525/526 by Theoderic. Our tessera is therefore more than a name-piece: it fixes Symmachus materially at the moment when Italy remained formally Roman, yet had already entered a new political order.