Owner Comments:
The design of Mars advancing on the denarius might be described as wishful thinking. In fact, Severus Alexander, who by accounts, could have been a revered emperor, became disliked by many of the legionaires and a portion of the general populace though his inadequacy as a military leader.
Severus Alexander was the last of the Severans and a "modest and dutiful youth of only seventeen years of age" (Gibbon) when his reign began in 222 after the assassination of the excessive Elagabalus and of his mother. It was a prosperous period for Rome, but in dealing with the ascendant Sassanids, Alexander managed to check their advance but at great loss in the battlefield under his personal generalship. Then, in confronting the threats of the Germanic tribes, he resorted to diplomacy and bribery to delay them. For these things, the militarists sought to replace him by deadly force.
He and his mother Julia Mamaea, who had been the "real power behind the throne" were themselves assassinated in March 235. This event marked the beginning of the "Crisis of the Third Century".
Alexander was a man of dignity and morals, shunned imperial extravagances, and accepted counsel from the Senators (as well as from his mother and his grandmother before her). He was a man of religious tolerance and is said to have worshipped Christ. Furthermore, he allowed the erection of a Jewish synagogue in Rome and presented it with a scroll of the Torah.