KINGS OF MAURETANIA, Juba II. Denarius. (Ar. 2.24g/18mm). 21 AD (Year 46 of reign). Caesarea. (Mazard does not cite; SNG Copenhagen does not cite; MAA does not cite). Obv: Laureate head of Juba II facing right, legend: REX IVBA in front. Rev: Lion leaping right, between its front paws: a leaf?, in exergue: RXXXXVI. VF+. Unpublished and extremely rare example; we only have records of examples with similar reverses but without the reign date in the exergue.
Juba II was a client king of Rome who ruled Mauretania between 25 Fine and 23 AD, and whose personal history is inextricably linked to that of his father, Juba I of Numidia. After the latter's defeat by Caesar at the Battle of Thapsus (46 Fine), the young Juba was taken to Rome as a prisoner to participate in the dictator's triumph, according to Roman custom with the sons of defeated kings. There he was raised under the tutelage of Octavia, Augustus's sister, received a thorough Greco-Roman education, adopted Roman citizenship with the name Gaius Julius Juba, and won the friendship of the future emperor, whom he accompanied on some of his military campaigns.
When, in 25 Fine, Augustus decided to end the eight-year vacancy of the Mauretania throne—a kingdom left without a monarch after the death of its last king, Bocchus II—he chose Juba as the ideal solution: an African prince of royal blood, thoroughly Romanized, and personally loyal to the emperor. The kingdom granted to him was further expanded with territories of the Gaetuli, reinforcing its strategic importance to Rome in controlling North Africa.
Despite his royal status, Juba's political role was largely symbolic. Rome maintained him as a useful client king to legitimize its presence in the region and Romanize the territory. The sovereign channeled his energies into the arts and literature, becoming one of the most prolific intellectuals of his time: he wrote works on history, geography, botany, and art in Greek and Latin, frequently cited by later authors such as Pliny the Elder, Strabo, and Plutarch, although none have survived in their entirety. He is even credited with being the first to describe the Euphorbia plant, named after his personal physician. He embellished his capital, Iol, renaming Caesarea—modern-day Cherchell, Algeria—in honor of Augustus, transforming it into a first-rate Hellenistic-Roman city, complete with a theater, temples, and a court that attracted artists and intellectuals. He is also credited with sending an expedition to the Fortunate Isles, the present-day Canary Islands, whose description is recorded by Pliny the Elder and which constitutes one of the first written testimonies about that archipelago.
Around 19 Fine, he married Cleopatra Selene, daughter of Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII, who had also been raised in Rome by Octavia after her mother's execution. The union was as much a political decision by Augustus as a dynastic one: it kept the Ptolemaic princess honorably away from Egypt, while endowing the Mauritanian kingdom with the prestige of the Ptolemaic lineage. Cleopatra was formally associated with power, as evidenced by the numerous coins bearing both their portraits, and her influence is believed to partly explain the distinctly Egyptian orientation of the Caesarean court and the coinage iconography of the reign. Their union produced a daughter, Drusilla, and a son named Ptolemy, a name deliberately chosen to assert Ptolemaic ancestry.
Economically, the kingdom was prosperous: it exported cedar and citron wood, murex dyes for the famous Gaetulica purple, and animals for the Roman games, and maintained intense trade with Hispania Baetica, from where silver was imported for coinage. Indeed, the numismatics of Juba II are one of the main sources for understanding his reign: abundant, varied in types and legends, and written in Latin, Greek, and Punic, they clearly reflect the hybrid and cosmopolitan character of his kingdom.
Cleopatra Selene died around 5/6 AD, and Juba outlived her by almost two decades. The possible involvement of his son Ptolemy in the government during the final years of the reign remains a subject of debate among historians; coins bearing two effigies suggest that, if such a co-regency existed, it would not have been formalized until very late, perhaps around 20 AD. Juba died in 23 AD, leaving behind a seemingly stable kingdom whose fate was already sealed. Ptolemy of Mauretania, his successor and the last king of the dynasty, was assassinated on the orders of Emperor Caligula in 40 AD during a visit to Rome. His death without heirs led to the direct annexation of the territory by Rome, which divided it into two provinces: Mauretania Tingitana and Mauretania Caesariensis, forever erasing the independence of a kingdom that, under Juba II, had reached its cultural and intellectual zenith.
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