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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Bing, post: 2743491, member: 44132&quot;]I looked up your new coin [USER=44183]@stevex6[/USER] in Michael Harlan&#039;s book:&nbsp; Roman Republican Moneyers and their coins.&nbsp; I found this interesting tidbit:</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot; On one of the Sabine farms there was a heifer of marvelous size and beauty, but most conspicuous for her horns. The prophets foretold that imperium would reside in whatever city the man came from who sacrificed the heifer to Diana.&nbsp; So the Sabine led the heifer to Diane&#039;s shrine and stood before the alter.&nbsp; Aware of the prophecy, the Roman priest weighed the momentous consequences, &quot;Stranger&quot;, he said, &quot; are you preparing to make an impure sacrifice to Diana? Will you not first purify yourself in a living river?&quot; Not wanting to do anything wrong in the eyes of the goddess, the Sabine went down into the valley to the Tiber to purify himself.&nbsp; Our moneyer has depicted the scene at the point when the Roman priest has been left alone with the heifer standing before the lighted alter located on the rocks of the Aventine.&nbsp; He has started the sacrifice by sprinkling her head with holy water; and so it came to be that it was a Roman who sacrificed the heifer to Diana.&nbsp; For generations thereafter the heifer&#039;s skull with it&#039;s wondrous horns was seen hanging in the vestibule of the temple of Diana on the Aventine.&nbsp; Since it was customary in her other temples to hang stag heads, the cow skull here identifies this unique scene.&nbsp; Unfortunately, those wondrous horns depicted on Postumius&#039; bovine led Crawford to misidentify the heifer as a bull and this description continues to be repeated in some modern catalogs.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>Harlan goes on to say there are differing versions of the story, but all identify the bovine as a heifer and not a bull or ox.&nbsp; This also includes the skull on the obverse which then would not be a bucranium (or maybe it is).</p><p><br /></p><p>BTW, this book is a great read and a must for those who collect Roman Republican coinage.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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