Obv. IMP TRAIANO AVG GER DAC PM TR P COS V PP. Laureate head right; Rev. SPQR OPTIMO PRINCIPI. Dacian wearing peaked cap, seated on shield in mourning, with sword below. Reference: RIC II 219, BMC 175, RSC 529. The legend on the obverse abbreviates Imperator. Trajan. Augustus. Germanicus. Dacius. Pontifex Maximus. Tribuniciae Potestate. Consul V. Pater Patriae. The reverse abbreviates Senatus Populus Que Romanus. Optimo Principi is not abbreviated at all. Trajan is notorious for the length of his inscriptions, which are the longest of the imperial series. Here, the titles actually continue onto the reverse of the coin. It all translates as "Imperator, Trajan the Augustus, victor over the Germans and Dacians, chief priest, with the power of a tribune, consul for the fifth time, father of his country, the Senate and People of Rome: best of emperors." The advantage of such a lengthy inscription is that it allows the coin to be dated with some accuracy. It must, of course, date after AD 98, when Trajan's reign began and he received the titles Augustus, Pontifex Maximus, and Pater Patriae. And it is later than AD 102, when Trajan was hailed as Dacius. More significantly, it is later than AD 103, when coins such as this denarius began to be struck in the dedicatory dative, instead of the nominative, TRAIANO instead of TRAIAN(US). (Identified with the Senate and People of Rome, the legend seems to imply a significant change in the relationship between the princeps and Senate whereby Trajan would accept the fiction that it remained the source of legitimate power in the governance of Rome as long as he was free to implement his own policies.) That year, Trajan also was made consul for the fifth time (AD 103-111). It is the image on the reverse, however, that allows a more precise date. In AD 107, coins such as this one were issued to celebrate the end of the Second Dacian War late the previous year. (Dacia was so thoroughly Romanized after its conquest that it now is known as Romania, its language the only one in the Balkans to be derived from Latin.)
The sword below the Dacian warrior is not broken but a falx, a curved sword shaped like a elongated sickle.
