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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GinoLR, post: 24817132, member: 128351&quot;]You can be sure the deity seated above is Fortuna, not Astarte. She wears a turreted crown and under her feet you can distinguish the typical river-god swimming. This Tyche (that&#039;s Greek for Latin Fortuna) sitting on a rock above a swimming river god is a copy of the Tyche of Antioch, like many Tyches of other Syrian, Mesopotamian and Cilician cities. The leaping ram looking backwards is also a symbol usually associated with the Tyche of Antioch, but it is present with the Tyche of Damascus as well. The little Marsyas is the statue of Marsyas on the Roman Forum, near which citizenship was granted to freedmen and newcomers. It symbolizes the <i>Jus Italicum</i> being given to the colonia of Damascus.</p><p><br /></p><p>Astarte is rarely represented as a woman. Like many semitic deities (Yahweh, Allah, even Muhammad), it was forbidden (or just avoided) to give her an anthropomorphic aspect. Do you know many statues or reliefs of the Roman period showing Astarte? I don&#039;t. She was the goddess of Sidon, and since the Achemenid Empire in the 5th c. BC the coins of Sidon represented her through her title (&quot;Sidonian Goddess&quot;), her galley, a spherical baetyl in its cart. Some numismatists assimilate Astarte and Tyche, and think the Tyche of Sidon, with her turreted crown, must be Astarte. It&#039;s a possibility, but it&#039;s a Tyche in the first place...</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1588547[/ATTACH]</p><p>Elagabalus, Sidon, AE 19 mm. The Baetyl of Astarte in its cart.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1588548[/ATTACH]</p><p>Sidon, pseudo autonomous under Domitian :</p><p>Obv. Veiled head of Tyche r., star and aphlaston in r. field</p><p>Rev.: ΣΙΔΩΝΟΣ ΘΕΑΣ, ΗϘΡ (above), ΑϚ (below), galley, l. (AD 87/8)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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