Shaggy Haired Deities

 

The deity on the obverse of this is always identified as Jupiter.  Based, I suppose, primarily on the reverse which is clearly Jupiter in a quadriga with his lightening bolt and scepter. However, the iconography, especially the three thick locks of hair down the neck, looks an awful lot like typical representations of Saturn from the same period:

 

 

Of course, these are all likely to be the work of the same die cutter and that could account for most of the visual similarity.  Nevertheless it strikes me that if that die cutter had wanted to differentiate two different deities on these obverses, he would have done so in a more dramatic fashion.

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