Crawford 437/1a

Caius Coelius Caldus, 51 BC

Denarius 

Diameter: 22 mm

Weight: 3.88 g. 

Obverse: C·CO[EL·CAL]DVS Head of C. Coelius Caldus right; below, COS and, behind, tablet inscribed L·D.

Reverse: [C]ALDVS·IIIVIR Head of Sol r.; behind, oval shield decorated with thunderbolt; before, Macedonian shield.

Reference: Crawford 437/1a.

Provenance: ex Andrew McCabe collection = Ex Ratto Fixed Price List March 1964, 269 and Roma Numismatics XI, 27 April 2016, Eucharius, 678 sales.

Note: Two portraits of fine style and a delicate iridescent tone. 

Caius Coelius Caldus issued two coin types during his tenure as moneyer, and both depict on the obverse the head of his namesake ancestor who was the first of his family to attain the consulship. Toynbee noted the extremely realistic rendering of the portrait and thought it must have been based on an original portrait (J. M. C. Toynbee, Roman Historical Portraits, p. 21). In Rome, nobles were entitled to display images (imagines) of ancestors in the atrium of the family house, and these were either sculptures, more often, death masks molded directly from the face of the deceased. The superb lifelike rendering of the portrait of the consul C. Coelius Caldus on this coin indicates that perhaps his death mask served as the model used by the die engravers for this issue.

The moneyer's ancestor C. Coelius Caldus, the Consul in 94 BC,  was a prominant figure of the later Roman Republic and played a role in the Sullan civil war of 85-83 BC. As Tribune of the Plebs in 107 BC, he passed the Lex Tabellaria, which required that secret ballots be cast in trials for high treason. After his consulship in 94 BC, he was made proconsul in Spain, where he won victories against the native tribes and was acclaimed Imperator. A partisan of Marius, he tried to prevent the army of Pompey the Great from linking up with that of Sulla during the Civil War of 82 BC, but was unsuccessful. His eventual fate is unknown, but he likely died in the Sullan proscriptions or of natural causes before he could be proscribed. His son or grandson struck a series of coins in 51 BC bearing his ancestor's powerful portrait.

The reverse image of Sol flanked by Roman and Macedonian shields either is a punning reference to the names Coelius, ("sky") and Caldus ("hot"), or a reference to an otherwise unattested military victory in the East.

Colección : 16 Roman Republic