I feel for sure I’ve put this image next to the gem below before, but I wanted to make sure I have a note of it again. (RRC 39/2).
And for extra fun this coin of Hyria? Orra? Dated to c 210-150 by HN Italy
adventures in my head
I feel for sure I’ve put this image next to the gem below before, but I wanted to make sure I have a note of it again. (RRC 39/2).
And for extra fun this coin of Hyria? Orra? Dated to c 210-150 by HN Italy
I used to think I was the only person who might mess up Lanuvium and Lavinium. NOT SO! Apparently Dionysius of Halicarnassus made the same mistake when he told this story:
Why should we assume he’s wrong? Or at least that the attribution of this prophecy is disputed? Whelp. The obverse of the above coin looks like this:
That’s Juno Sospita, the patron goddess of Lanuvium! The moneyer’s family is well known for celebrating their connection to this city on their coins. If there was a statue that looked like the reverse, it probably stood in that forum, not at Lavinium. Add in this tantalizing bit of Horace:
Let the wicked be led by omens of screeching
from owls, by pregnant dogs, or a grey-she wolf,
And we can be pretty sure that Lanuvium that claimed the she-wolf and by extension the eagle as prodigies of its foundation.
It’s also a nice example of the wolf as a non-Roman, but still Latin, symbol, one that is morphed into a proto-Roman symbol through its alignment to the Aeneas narrative.
Pity its too late for the book. Thank goodness for this blog as a thought dumping space.
[Refs found at Crawford 1974: 482]