Roman Republic Coin
L. Scribonius Libo
(Circa 62 BC)


Struck circa 62 BC in Rome
Silver AR Denarius - 19 mm - 3.95 grams - 5h
Reference: Crawford 416/1a
Certification: NGC Choice VF 8568695-015

Obverse: LIBO BON•EVENT, Head of Bonus Eventus facing right

Reverse: PVTEAL SCRIBON, Puteal Scribonianum, decorated with garland and two lyres, hammer at base

Collector's Notes:
Provenance: From the Merrill Gibson Collection

See the Genuine History Collection



L. Scribonius Libo was triumvir monetalis in 62 BC. The denarii he minted feature the Puteal Scribonianum and the head of Bonus Eventus, probably to celebrate the repression of Catilina's Conspiracy.

The Catilinarian conspiracy, sometimes Second Catilinarian conspiracy, was an attempted coup d'état by Lucius Sergius Catilina (Catiline) to overthrow the Roman consuls of 63 BC – Marcus Tullius Cicero and Gaius Antonius Hybrida – and forcibly assume control of the state in their stead.

The conspiracy was formed after Catiline's defeat in the consular elections for 62, held in early autumn 63. He assembled a coalition of malcontents – aristocrats who had been denied political advancement by the voters, dispossessed farmers, and indebted veterans of Sulla – and planned to seize the consulship from Cicero and Antonius by force. In November 63, Cicero exposed the conspiracy, causing Catiline to flee from Rome and eventually to his army in Etruria. In December, Cicero uncovered nine more conspirators organising for Catiline in the city; on advice of the senate, he had them executed without trial. In early January 62 BC, Antonius defeated Catiline in battle, putting an end to the plot.

Modern views on the conspiracy vary. It is well accepted that the ancient sources were heavily biased against Catiline and demonised him in the aftermath of his defeat. The extent of the exaggeration is unclear and still debated. Most classicists agree that the conspiracy occurred as broadly described – rather than being a manipulative invention of Cicero's – but concede that its actual threat to the republic was exaggerated for Cicero's benefit and to heighten later dramatic narratives.

Catiline's conspiracy was a major armed insurrection against Rome, like Sulla's civil war that preceded it (83–81 BC) and Caesar's civil war (49–45 BC) that followed it. The main sources on it are both hostile: Sallust's monograph Bellum Catilinae and Cicero's Catilinarian orations. Catiline, before the conspiracy, had been complicit in the Sullan regime. While no member of his family had held the consulship since the fifth century BC, he had strong connections to the aristocracy and was both a nobilis and a patrician.

Catiline was prosecuted in 65 and 64 BC for various crimes but was acquitted after several former consuls spoke in his defence. His influence even during his prosecutions was considerable. For example, Cicero had considered a joint candidacy with him in 65 BC. While some of the ancient sources claim Catiline was involved in a First Catilinarian conspiracy to overthrow the consuls of that year, modern scholars believe this first conspiracy is fictitious.


1889 depiction by Cesare Maccari of Cicero denouncing Catiline in the senate.
Mary Beard notes that this idealised depiction is "a seductive fantasy of the occasion and the setting".
There was no age gap, both men were in their forties.


Bonus Eventus ("Good Outcome") was a divine personification in ancient Roman religion. The Late Republican scholar Varro lists him as one of the twelve deities who presided over agriculture, paired with Lympha, the goddess who influenced the water supply. The original function of Bonus Eventus may have been agricultural, but during the Imperial era, he represents a more general concept of success and was among the numerous abstractions who appeared as icons on Roman coins.

Bonus Eventus had a temple of unknown date in the Campus Martius. It is mentioned only by Ammianus Marcellinus, in connection to a new portico (Porticus Boni Eventūs) built by the urban prefect Claudius in 374 AD. Five Corinthian capitals of extraordinary size that were uncovered in the 19th century may have belonged to the portico, which was located in the Gardens of Agrippa.

The epithet Bonus, "the Good," is used with other abstract deities such as Bona Fortuna ("Good Fortune"), Bona Mens ("Good Thinking" or "Sound Mind"), and Bona Spes ("Valid Hope," perhaps to be translated as "Optimism"), as well as with the mysterious and multivalent Bona Dea, a goddess whose rites were celebrated by women.

Inscriptional evidence for the god is found at several locations, including in the provinces. Senior officials at Sirmium, Pannonia, dedicated a shrine to Bonus Eventus for the wellbeing of high-ranking members of the city council. In Roman Britain, the mosaic floor of a villa at Woodchester bore the reminder Worship Bonus Eventus duly. A dedication made by a married couple to Bonus Eventus along with Fortuna indicates that the god's sphere of influence had expanded beyond both agriculture and the embodiment of imperial virtues. Images of Bonus Eventus appear regularly on engraved gems, and in a jeweller's hoard from Snettisham, Bonus Eventus was the most frequent device on intaglios, appearing on 25 percent of the 127 found. These usages point to a protective or tutelary function for the god, as well as the existence of a religious community to which the jeweller marketed his wares.

Coins featuring Bonus Eventus were issued during the turmoil of the Year of Four Emperors (69 AD) and the reigns of Galba, Vespasian, Titus, Antoninus Pius, and Septimius Severus. On these coins and on gems, Bonus Eventus is a standing male nude, usually with one leg bent and his head turned away toward a libation bowl in his outstretched hand. Sometimes he is partially clad in a chlamys that covers his back, or in an over-the-shoulder himation with the ends framing his torso. Poppies and stalks of grain are common attributes.

In his book on sculpture, Pliny describes two statues of "Bonus Eventus" which were in fact renamed images of Greek gods. One was a bronze by Euphranor and the other a marble by Praxiteles. The latter stood in the Capitolium with a statue of Bona Fortuna, and the former somewhere between the repurposed Athena below the Capitol and the Leto in the Temple of Concord. It is unclear from Pliny's description whether both Greek statues had originally represented the same Greek deity. The classical art historian Adolf Furtwängler conjectured that Praxiteles had depicted an Agathos Daimon, since he was accompanied by a "Bona Fortuna," presumably a translation of the Greek Agathē Tychē. Euphranor's bronze is sometimes taken as the type on which the iconography of coins and gems was based, since the figure held poppies and grain. These attributes suggest an Eleusinian deity, and while the Greek original is most often taken as Triptolemus, no extant depictions of Triptolemus show the combination of poppies and grain, which is associated with Demeter (Roman Ceres).



Votive dedication to Bonus Eventus