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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Bronwen, post: 11176792, member: 5833&quot;]What a lovely batch to behold.&nbsp; The one I know best is the winged lady leading 4 horses.&nbsp; She has her origin in the <a href="https://www.coinarchives.com/a/results.php?results=100&amp;search=plautius+plancus" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.coinarchives.com/a/results.php?results=100&amp;search=plautius+plancus" rel="nofollow">silver denarius</a> struck by the moneyer L. Plautius Plancus in the Roman Republican era.&nbsp; There are two schools of thought about who she is.</p><p><br /></p><p>One is that she is Victory leading a quadriga (which can be a chariot drawn by 4 horses or a team of 4 horses) into the heavens.&nbsp; This ties in with the notion that the image on the coin is copied from an ancient painting by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachus_of_Thebes" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachus_of_Thebes" rel="nofollow">Nicomachus of Thebes</a> that his brother, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Munatius_Plancus" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Munatius_Plancus" rel="nofollow">L. Munatius Plancus</a> was said to have dedicated to the Temple of Jupiter.&nbsp; Pliny the Elder gave the painting the descriptive title <i>Victoria quadrigam in sublime rapiens;</i> the coin might also be described this way, depending on how you translate <i>quadrigam</i> and <i>rapiens</i>.&nbsp; There is a sort of skewed logic that we know how the painting looked because we have this coin and that we have this coin because that&#039;s how the painting looked.&nbsp; And that even though there was a suspicion that Munatius arranged to have his brother put on the list of those proscribed &amp; slated for death, the moneyer, who was executed for his sybaritic ways, chose this image connected to his general-politician brother for the reverse of his coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the other account she is Aurora, the Dawn, leading the 4 Horses of the Sun, and the Medusa head/gorgoneion on the obverse is a mask.&nbsp; The way this goes, the flute players who provided music for religious events went on strike and fled Rome.&nbsp; Usually the account of this rebellion cited in explanation of the coin is the one by Ovid in <i>Fasti</i>.&nbsp; You can read more about it <a href="https://thepetrifiedmuse.blog/2018/02/22/on-strike/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://thepetrifiedmuse.blog/2018/02/22/on-strike/" rel="nofollow">here</a>, but the relevant bit is:</p><p><br /></p><p>And now the wain [carrying the drunken flutists] had entered the city of Rome by the Esquiline, and at morn it stood in the middle of the Forum. In order to deceive the Senate as to their persons and their number, Plautius [an ancestor of L. Plautius Plancus&#039; adoptive family] commanded that their faces should be covered with masks...&nbsp; In that way he thought that the return of the exiles could be best concealed, lest they should be censured for having come back against the orders of their guild.</p><p><br /></p><p>The rationale for the coin imagery being based on this tale is that the obverse alludes to the masks and the reverse to the action&#039;s having occurred at dawn, L. Plautius Plancus having chosen it for the Plautian connection.&nbsp; I find this explanation to be reaching just a little.</p><p><br /></p><p>Muddying the waters, in addition to the reins of the horses, the lady holds in her hand an object that in some iterations looks like a torch (1 point for Aurora), in some clearly looks like a palm frond (1 for Victory), and in some sorta-kinda looks like a palm frond.</p><p><br /></p><p>One of the prize holdings of the Hermitage is this cameo, believed to be copied from the coin, dated to the first century BCE, signed as being by Rufus:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]538024[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>What she holds is more easily seen in this grisaille enamel version:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]538025[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>But also:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]538026[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>It may be the version by Luigi Pichler that introduced the wispier frond:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]538027[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>As for the evidence of the coins, many examples are too worn/blurry to show this detail, and there is more than one version of the coin.&nbsp; Some of the sharpest look like this:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]538028[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Victory is a fairly common motif on Roman coins, along with depictions of emperors.&nbsp; Aurora really would be a departure.&nbsp; A search for <a href="https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=medusa%20coins&amp;srsltid=AfmBOoqXSNtfpOVoEs25P-A0bHi_l1PJ9CpJUr5iVo7bSOiZqghQfXwy" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=medusa%20coins&amp;srsltid=AfmBOoqXSNtfpOVoEs25P-A0bHi_l1PJ9CpJUr5iVo7bSOiZqghQfXwy" rel="nofollow">Roman coins with Medusa</a> turns up a number of them.&nbsp; A search for Aurora mostly turns up this one.</p><p><br /></p><p>Either way, it makes for a beautiful coin and a beautiful cameo.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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