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Message:: [QUOTE="Ocatarinetabellatchitchix, post: 7447149, member: 99554"]The (true) storyThe myth of the founding of Rome does not begin with the twins Romulus and Remus breastfed by a wolf. But with… Aeneas, one of the heroes of the Trojan War, whose actions were later sung by the Roman author Virgil (70-19 BC) in his poem The Aeneid. In the 12th century BC, legend has it that the Trojan, fleeing his city devastated by the Greeks, came to settle, after an adventurous journey through Sicily and Carthage, on the banks of the Tiber. There he married Lavinia, the daughter of a king named Latinus. In honor of his father-in-law, Aeneas gives his people the name Latins. Four centuries later, a succession conflict between two of his descendants, the brothers Numitor and Amulius, rages on. The latter dethroned Numitor and, to ward off the danger of offspring, forced the daughter of his rival, Rhéa Silvia, to join the order of the vestals, dedicated to celibacy and chastity. This was without counting on the god Mars who, in love with the young girl, unites with her and gives her twins, the future Romulus and Remus ... Amulius decides to throw the children into the waters of the flooding Tiber. The flood lays their wicker cradle at the foot of the Palatine Hill. Nursed by a wolf in a cave, the Lupercal, the newborns are taken in by a couple of shepherds. As teenagers, they overthrow the usurper Amulius and reestablish their grandfather Numitor on the throne of Lazio. Then they set out to found a city on the site of the Palatine where they were miraculously saved. Designated, in 753 BC,  by a sign of the sky like founder and king of this place, Romulus traces with the plow the furrow marking the enclosure of the city, but must face the jealousy of his brother. Remus, by bravado, crosses this sacred limit. And Romulus kills him. Rome was born. In the blood. It was an April 21st. [ATTACH=full]1291618[/ATTACH] A classic Roma/ she-wolf The coinageMany coins bore the image of the goddess Roma in effigy (Roma aeterna, Thea Roma). The goddess Roma was not, indeed, a pure and simple abstraction. It was given a concrete form, she was represented under human features and also  invested with various attributes. This type was not immutable. Even before the Asians and Greeks made the Roman city a goddess, the Romans themselves had personified their city. On several consular and patrician denarius from the 3rd century BC, Roma is already depicted in profile or face, standing and affixed to a spear or else to a trophy of arms: sometimes she looks like Pallas; sometimes she recalls the type of the Amazons, and her right breast is uncovered but always her attitude and her character are clearly warlike. It is obviously from the Greeks of southern Italy that the Romans borrowed the images they used to represent their city personified. [ATTACH=full]1291621[/ATTACH] <img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/TitusNorthDetail.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /> Roma escorting the Emperor. Arch of Titus Other coins of the Roman republic bear a helmeted woman's head to the right, which has given rise to many discussions between numismatists. Some wanted to see in it an image of Rome itself: such was the opinion of Aldini and especially of Mommsen. The others, on the contrary, denied that this head could ever represent Rome: after Eckhel and the abbot Cavedoni, Kluegmann supported this thesis; he pointed out, not without reason, that the ornamentation of the helmet, with which this head is capped, derives totally or almost totally from the cricket; however this animal decorated the helmet of the Athena Parthenos of Phidias, and, on the other hand, it never seems to have had any relation with Rome, consequently, this helmeted head is that, not of Rome, but of Minerva. [ATTACH=full]1291620[/ATTACH] Roma On the antoninus Pius' column. Babelon, in his coins of the Roman Republic, tried to reconcile the two opposing opinions: according to him, it is indeed Rome personified which is represented on these coins; but the Romans designed this image in imitation of the Greek type of Pallas. This choice is all the less surprising than in Magna Graecia, in southern Italy, Pallas was sometimes characterized by the epithet Roma, a Greek word meaning: strength, vigor. What is certain is that the oldest iconographic type of personified Rome is a distinctly warlike type of character. [ATTACH=full]1291619[/ATTACH] Roma seated beside Augustus. Gemma augustea sculpture by Dioscurides. On this day when the Great city was founded, please show me your coins related to ROME ! [ATTACH=full]1291622[/ATTACH] Roma seated ( my only RIC I)[/QUOTE]

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