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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Gavin Richardson, post: 2600270, member: 83956&quot;][ATTACH=full]567445[/ATTACH] I think sometimes it’s helpful to consider later reflexes of iconography in venturing an interpretation. As I’ve said and written, I believe that the “Aeneas leading Ascanius” iconography is behind the so-called “barbarian and hut” reverse image in a meaningful way. I also think this iconography later becomes Christianized in Byzantine Anatasis imagery (see image above). Properly speaking, the Anastasis can refer either to the Resurrection or to the apocryphal tradition that during the three days between the Crucifixion and Resurrection, Christ descended into Hell and freed the souls of those who had died prior to Christ’s salvific act. The iconography of the Anastasis depicted a towering Christ holding a cruciform standard, grasping the hand or wrist of Adam or an Old Testament patriarch, and leading him from Hell’s captivity into the Kingdom of Heaven. In 1973 Ellen C. Schwartz surveyed four types of Anastasis iconography, with her third type deriving from the numismatic reverse motifs of Constans and Constantius II.&nbsp; (“A New Source for the Byzantine Anastasis,” <i>Marsyas</i>, 16 (1972-;1973), 30). In short, there are no “good guys and bad guys” here. The Anastasis imagery stresses cooperation, with one figure (Christ) leading another (Adam). I believe the same thing is occurring in the fourth-century coin: perhaps a Roman soldier is leading a barbarian into <i>Romanitas</i>, but such a gesture is deeply indebted to the widespread iconography of Aeneas leading Ascanius from Troy to Rome.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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