RIN 110 (2009) pp. 291-310 K. BUTCHER - M. PONTING - J. MUONA THE DENARII OF OTHO: A STYLISTIC AND COMPOSITIONAL STUDY Introduction Marcus Salvius Otho seized power in a coup on 15 January AD 69, and committed suicide on 15 or 16 April after his army was defeated in battle by the forces of his rival, Vitellius ( 1 ). Apart from some provincial silver and bronze produced at Antioch in Syria and Alexandria in Egypt, the bulk of the coinage of this short reign consists of aurei and denarii issued by the mint of Rome ( 2 ). As is well known, no base metal issues were produced at Rome for this emperor. This paper presents the results of analyses of twenty-six denarii and is the largest group of coins of Otho ever subjected to metallurgical analysis ( 3 ). A large group has been analysed before: in 1976 D.R. WALKER published sur- face analyses for 21 denarii of Otho as part of a larger programme of analyses of Roman silver coins. Until the 1990s his results were taken as definitive, (1) The well-known historical and biographical accounts provided by Tacitus, Cassius Dio, Suetonius and Plutarch supply considerable detail, enabling extraordinarily full modern narratives for such a short reign, e.g. WELLESLEY 1975; MURISON 1993, 1999; MORGAN 2006 (rather downbeat about the contribution of numismatics to study of the period: p. 3). (2) Antioch: BUTCHER 2004: 70, 71, 348-350; RPC I, nos 4199-4200, 4316-4321; Alexandria: RPC I 5354-5370; SAVIO 1991, 1993; Rome: RIC I 2 , pp. 258-261. (3) These analyses were undertaken as part of a larger ongoing project to analyse Ro- man silver coins from Nero to Commodus funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) of Great Britain, ID No: 119434. Additional funding for one of the authors (KB) was provided by the University Research Board of the American University of Beirut.