ufo_data/bin/rr0/tran193.md

• Publius Helvius Pertinax (126-193), after a successful military career and a consul post, was chosen by the conspirators who had just freed Rome from the tyrannical Commodus to take his place. He was assassinated a few months after his accession to the throne by the Praetorian Guard. In the last three months of his brief reign, he had coins minted. One of these coins was found in Syria and can be seen in the Federico Eusebio Archaeological Museum in Alba, the Piedmont city where Publius Helvius Pertinax was born. This coin has the remarkable peculiarity of showing what could well be a mysterious flying object. In the Italian ufology magazine Clypeus, numismatist Renato Gatto gave the following description:
  
  The Emperor Pertinax (...) had coins minted not with any star (a decorative motif often used to immortalize great events) but with a globe surmounted by antennas similar to those of our first artificial satellites. Many experts, after examining these coins, agreed to affirm that the object represented was neither the Sun, nor the Moon, nor any other celestial body. This certainty is based on the fact that the 4 "rays" of the globe in question are arranged in a completely different way from that which characterizes the representations of stars. The words Providentia deorum engraved on one of the faces of the coin exalt the goodness of the gods. On the other face, one sees a woman personifying Providentia, a minor divinity who must have manifested herself at the time of the appearance of the four-rayed globe that Rome wanted to commemorate.
  
  Is it rash to suggest that this antennaed globe could be one of those mysterious flying objects called UFOs? By looking at the photographs of the coin, one sees a woman stretching out her hands towards an enigmatic object above her, a globe from which 4 rays emerge in asymmetrical positions, while the usual representations of a known star are symmetrical. But then, what is the mysterious event commemorated by the coin? The Roman historian of the 5th century Lampridius speaks in his Life of Commodus of a bright and quite large object that had crossed the sky during the reign of the tyrant. The excellent Greek historian Herodian (170-240), considered one of the most reliable of his time and who held public offices in Rome, confirms in his Notes on the History of the Empire after Marcus Aurelius (book 1) that stars were seen suspended in the air in broad daylight at that time and locates the appearance of the event in 189 or 190. It is therefore quite possible that the coin of Emperor Pertinax wanted to account for its appearance.