Roman Republic P. Servilius M.f. Rullus moneyer Silver Denarius 21mm (3.89 grams) Rome mint, circa 85 B.C. Reference: Fonteia 9; B.M.C. 2476; Syd. 724; Craw. 353/1a Certification: NGC Ancients VF 4529166-015 Laureate head of Vejovis right, monogram of Roma below chin, thunderbolt below head, MN . FONTEI . C . F behind. Infant winged Genius seated on goat right, caps of the Dioscuri above; thyrsus below; all within laurel wreath. In the temple of Vejovis in Rome there stood near his statue a goat bearing a winged Genius on its back, a representation of which recalls the infancy of Jupiter who was suckled by the goat Amaltheia on Mount Ida. You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.
In Greek mythology, Amalthea or Amaltheia (Greek: Ἀμάλθεια) is the most-frequently mentioned foster-mother of Zeus. Her name in Greek ("tender goddess") is clearly an epithet, signifying the presence of an earlier nurturing goddess, whom the Hellenes, whose myths we know, knew to be located in Crete, where Minoans may have called her a version of "Dikte". Amalthea is sometimes represented as the goat who suckled the infant-god in a cave in Cretan Mount Aigaion ("Goat Mountain"), sometimes as a goat-tending nymph of uncertain parentage (the daughter of Oceanus, Haemonius, Olenos, or - according to Lactantius - Melisseus), who brought him up on the milk of her goat. Having multiple and uncertain mythological parents, indicates wide worship of a deity in many cultures having varying local traditions. Amalthea becomes blurred with Adamanthea at times. In the tradition represented by Hesiod's Theogony , Cronus swallowed all of his children immediately after birth. The mother goddess Rhea, Zeus' mother, deceived her brother consort Cronus by giving him a stone wrapped to look like a baby instead of Zeus. Since she instead gave the infant Zeus to Adamanthea to nurse in a cave on a mountain in Crete, it is clear that Adamanthea is a doublet of Amalthea. In many literary references, the Greek tradition relates that in order that Cronus should not hear the wailing of the infant, Amalthea gathered about the cave the Kuretes or the Korybantes to dance, shout, and clash their spears against their shields.
A thyrsus or thyrsos was a wand or staff of giant fennel (Ferula communis ) covered with ivy vines and leaves, sometimes wound with taeniae and always topped with a pine cone. Symbolism The thyrsus, associated with Dionysus (or Bacchus) and his followers, the Satyrs and Maenads, is a symbol of prosperity, fertility, hedonism, and pleasure/enjoyment in general. It has been suggested that this was specifically a fertility phallus, with the fennel representing the shaft of the penis and the pine cone representing the "seed" issuing forth. The thyrsus was tossed in the Bacchic dance: Pentheus : The thyrsus- in my right hand shall I hold it? Or thus am I more like a Bacchanal? Dionysus : In thy right hand, and with thy right foot raise it". Sometimes the thyrsus was displayed in conjunction with a kantharos wine cup, another symbol of Dionysus, forming a male-and-female combination like that of the royal scepter and orb. In the Iliad , Diomedes, one of the leading warriors of the Achaeans, mentions the thyrsus while speaking to Glaucus, one of the Lycian commanders in the Trojan army, about Lycurgus, the king of Scyros: He it was that/drove the nursing women who were in charge/of frenzied Bacchus through the land of Nysa,/and they flung their thyrsi on the ground as/murderous Lycurgus beat them with his ox-/goad. (Iliad , Book VI.132-37) The thyrsus is explicitly attributed to Dionysus in Euripides's play The Bacchae as part of the costume of the Dionysian cult. ...To raise my Bacchic shout, and clothe all who respond/ In fawnskin habits, and put my thyrsus in their hands-/ The weapon wreathed with ivy-shoots..." Euripides also writes, "There's a brute wildness in the fennel-wands-Reverence it well." (The Bacchae and Other Plays , trans. by Philip Vellacott, Penguin, 1954.) Plato writes in Phaedo : I conceive that the founders of the mysteries had a real meaning and were not mere triflers when they intimated in a figure long ago that he who passes unsanctified and uninitiated into the world below will live in a slough, but that he who arrives there after initiation and purification will dwell with the gods. For "many," as they say in the mysteries, "are the thyrsus bearers, but few are the mystics,"--meaning, as I interpret the words, the true philosophers. In Part II of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust , Mephistopheles tries to catch a Lamia, only to find out that she is an illusion: Well, then, a tall one I will catch.../And now a thyrsus -pole I snatch!/Only a pine-cone as its head. (7775-7777) Robert Browning mentions the thyrsus in passing in The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St Praxed's Church , as the dying bishop confuses Christian piety with classical extravagance: The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,/Those Pans and nymphs ye wot of, and perchance/Some tripod, thrysus , with a vase or so, (56-58)
Vejovis or Vejove (Latin: Vēiovis or Vēdiovis ; rare Vēive or Vēdius ) is a Roman god. Romans believe that Vejovis is one of the first gods to be born. He is a god of healing, and became associated with the Greek Asclepius. He is mostly worshipped in Rome and Bovillae in Latium. On the Capitoline Hill and on the Tiber Island, temples have been erected in his honor. In spring, goats have been sacrificed to avert plagues. Vejovis is portrayed as a young man, holding a bunch of arrows, pilum, (or lightning bolts) in his hand, and is accompanied by a goat. He may be based on the Etruscan god of vendetta[dubious - discuss ], known to them by the name Vetis written on the Piacenza Liver, a bronze model used in haruspical divination. The studies about Vejovis are very poor and unclear. They show a constant updating of his condition and his use by people: escaping from netherworld, Volcanic God responsible for marshland and earthquakes, and later guardian angel in charge of slaves and fighters refusing to lose. God of deceivers, he is called to protect right causes and to give pain and deception to enemies. His temple has been described as a haven safe from police for wrongly persecuted people, and dedicated to the protection of the new comers in Rome, but this view is probably wrong. The legend shows him more like an entity escaping from hell and trying to join the light and heaven, awesome fighter and protector of any people victims of unfairness. Aulus Gellius, in the Noctes Atticae , speculated that Vejovis is the inverse or ill-omened counterpart of Jupiter; compare Summanus. Aulus Gellius observes that the particle ve- that prefixes the name of the god also appears in Latin words such as vesanus , "insane," and thus interprets the name Vejovis as the anti-Jove. Aulus Gellius also informs us that Vejovis received the sacrifice of a female goat, sacrificed ritu humano ; this obscure phrase could either mean "after the manner of a human sacrifice" or "in the manner of a burial." He has been identified with Apollo, with the infant Jupiter, and speculatively as the Anti-Jupiter (i.e. the Jupiter of the Lower World) as suggested by his name. In art, he is depicted as a youth holding a Laurel wreath and some arrows, next to a goat. He had a temple between the two peaks of the Capitoline Hill in Rome, where his statue had a beardless head and carried a bundle of arrows in his right hand. It stood next to a statue of a goat. There is no firm evidence that he is a god of expiation and the protector of runaway criminals. Sacrifices have been made to him annually on March 7: A festival of Vejovis is held on this day, celebrating an ancient Etruscan or Latin deity whose exact function is lost by Roman times. He is possibly the subterranean counterpart of Jupiter, whose earthquakes and volcanoes mirrored Jupiter's thunder and lightning; however he is also at times identified with Apollo or as a younger version of Jupiter himself. In fact, Vejovis had three festivals in the Roman Calendar: on 1 January, 7 March, and 21 May. Vejovis in Roman religion, a god with uncertain attributes, worshiped in Rome between the two summits of the Capitoline Hill (the Arx and the Capitol) and on Tiber Island (both temples date from just after 200 BC) and at Bovillae, 12 miles southeast of Rome. His name may be connected with that of Jupiter (Jovis), but there is little agreement as to its meaning: he may be a "little Jupiter" or a "Sinister Devils Scorpion" for his enemies. Vejovis accepted a she-goat sacrifice humano ritu, meaning either "on behalf of the dead" or instead of a human sacrifice. At least, it is evidence to say this deity can have two faces, one for allies and one for enemies, his functions evolved with time and his progression, and he is not so simple to understand and to describe.
The Roman Republic (Latin: Res Publica Romana ) was the period of the ancient Roman civilization when the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 509 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and advised by a senate. A complex constitution gradually developed, centered on the principles of a separation of powers and checks and balances. Except in times of dire national emergency, public offices were limited to one year, so that, in theory at least, no single individual could dominate his fellow citizens. Roman provinces on the eve of the assassination of Julius Caesar, 44 BC Roman society was hierarchical. The evolution of the Constitution of the Roman Republic was heavily influenced by the struggle between the patricians, Rome's land-holding aristocracy, who traced their ancestry back to the early history of the Roman kingdom, and the plebeians, the far more numerous citizen-commoners. Over time, the laws that gave patricians exclusive rights to Rome's highest offices were repealed or weakened, and a new aristocracy emerged from among the plebeian class. The leaders of the Republic developed a strong tradition and morality requiring public service and patronage in peace and war, making military and political success inextricably linked. During the first two centuries of its existence the Republic expanded through a combination of conquest and alliance, from central Italy to the entire Italian peninsula. By the following century it included North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, Greece, and what is now southern France. Two centuries after that, towards the end of the 1st century BC, it included the rest of modern France, and much of the eastern Mediterranean. By this time, despite the Republic's traditional and lawful constraints against any individual's acquisition of permanent political powers, Roman politics was dominated by a small number of Roman leaders, their uneasy alliances punctuated by a series of civil wars. The victor in one of these civil wars, Octavian, reformed the Republic as a Principate, with himself as Rome's "first citizen" (princeps). The Senate continued to sit and debate. Annual magistrates were elected as before, but final decisions on matters of policy, warfare, diplomacy and appointments were privileged to the princeps as "first among equals" later to be known as imperator due to the holding of imperium, from which the term emperor is derived. His powers were monarchic in all but name, and he held them for his lifetime, on behalf of the Senate and people of Rome. The Roman Republic was never restored, but neither was it abolished, so the exact date of the transition to the Roman Empire is a matter of interpretation. Historians have variously proposed the appointment of Julius Caesar as perpetual dictator in 44 BC, the defeat of Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, and the Roman Senate's grant of extraordinary powers to Octavian under the first settlement and his adopting the title Augustus in 27 BC, as the defining event ending the Republic. Many of Rome's legal and legislative structures can still be observed throughout Europe and much of the world in modern nation states and international organizations. Latin, the language of the Romans, has influenced language across parts of Europe and the world. The Constitution of the Roman Republic was an unwritten set of guidelines and principles passed down mainly through precedent. The Roman constitution was not formal or even official. It was largely unwritten, uncodified, and constantly evolving. |