200/2. Pinaria - as (155 BC)

AE As (Rome, 155 BC)

O/ Laureate head of Janus; I above.

R/ Prow right; NAT above; I before; ROMA below.

26.59g; 33mm

Crawford 200/2 (13 specimens in Paris)

Pinarius Natta:

This moneyer came from the old patrician gens Pinaria (Cicero, De Divinatione, II, 21).  Despite its ancestry, this gens produced very few noteworthy members, although some of them are recorded until the empire.

The cognomen Natta is old; the first known Pinarius to bear it was Lucius Pinarius Natta, Magister Equitum in 363 and Praetor in 349 BC.  Then, nobody else of that name is recorded until our moneyer, and his probable brother (RRC 208, 150 BC), who are both completely unknown apart from their coins.  Finally, the last Natta of the Republic was a Pontifex in 56, brother-in-law to Clodius Pulcher, the famous Tribune (Cicero, Pro Domo, 118).  It seems that the Nattae had lost their political influence early, but retained some religious duties until the end of the Republic, as Cicero says that they learnt "their sacred ceremonies from Hercules himself" (Pro Domo, 134).

The Pinarii indeed claimed to descend from a mythical Pinarius, who had welcomed Hercules with a banquet when he came to Latium (Livy, i. 7). This myth was so deeply stuck in the Roman mythology that it was still used by Caracalla on an unique aureus.

Collection : Roman Republic