Crawford 458/1

Moneyer: Julius Caesar, 49-44 BC. 

Denomination: Denarius

Obverse: Diademed head of Venus to right

Reverse: CAESAR; Aeneas advancing left, carrying palladium in his right hand and Anchises on his left shoulder

Reference: Crawford 458/1

Mint: military mint moving with Caesar in Africa, 48-47 BC.

Notes: The reverse of this coin features a scene from Virgil's Aeneid (Eneida: opowieść o wędrówce Eneasza, przyszłego założyciela Rzymu). 

Aeneas is depicted carrying his lame father, Anchises, from the destroyed city of Troy to find new dwellings to the west. According to Virgil, Aeneas and his entourage eventually settled in Italy and their descendants, Romulus and Remus, went on to play a key role in founding the city of Rome. As a member of the Julian clan, which claimed to trace its ancestry back to Romulus, Remus and Aeneas, Caesar is here emphasising his connection to the mythical founders of Rome and demonstrating his divine right to rule.

The Roman nobility was always at pains to claim descent from either the gods or from mythical heroes, or even more often from both. The Julia gens claimed mythical descent from Iulus, son of the Trojan hero Aeneas, who himself was the son of the goddess Venus (Afrodite) and Anchises. Although not struck on as massive a scale as Caesar's well-known elephant type of 49-48 BC, this type is considerably more common than any other coin of Caesar, and was struck to pay for Caesar's protracted North African campaign against the Pompeians.

Palladium:  w mitologii greckiej i rzymskiej magiczny posążek Ateny o przydomku Pallas.

Według mitu palladion miał być przez Zeusa zrzucony z Olimpu Dardanosowi lub jego potomkowi Ilosowi – założycielowi Troi. Ponieważ według wierzeń Troi nie można było zdobyć, dopóki palladion będzie się znajdował w tamtejszej świątyni Ateny, Diomedes z Odyseuszem nocą wykradli święty posążek. Według odmiennej wersji mitu Grecy zdobyli jedynie kopię posążka, a oryginał uniósł ze sobą Eneasz podczas ucieczki z Troi.

Collection : 16 Roman Republic