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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DonnaML, post: 8262227, member: 110350&quot;][USER=75937]@Roman Collector[/USER], I hesitate to disagree with you, because I still consider myself a relative novice as a Roman coin collector compared to you. After all, it&#039;s your name, not mine!&nbsp; Nonetheless, I&#039;m sufficiently convinced that I&#039;m correct to want to try to persuade you that the figure held by Roma is supposed to be the Palladium, not Victory.&nbsp; (As to the spear vs. scepter issue, if there&#039;s anything clear it&#039;s that the nature of the object is ambiguous, although I still lean towards the scepter interpretation given the absence of a spear point on any example I&#039;ve seen.)</p><p><br /></p><p>First, you&#039;re certainly right that the Palladium is a typical attribute of Vesta and is usually shown as held by her, not by Roma. However, there are definitely exceptions, and there&#039;s no doubt that Roma is occasionally depicted as holding the Palladium -- a depiction that makes some sense given the analogy between Roma&#039;s place in Rome and Pallas Athena&#039;s place in both Athens and Troy, as well as the role of the Palladium in Rome&#039;s founding myth, as having been brought to Rome by Aeneas himself. Thus, here is a denarius of Septimius Severus (RIC 288) clearly showing Roma holding the Palladium, posted the other day by our own [USER=100951]@Mr.MonkeySwag96[/USER]:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1457274[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Where there is one exception, it should be no surprise that there are others. (And note that Roma appears to hold a scepter in this depiction, not a spear -- there&#039;s what looks to me like a round ball at the tip, not a point.)</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, let&#039;s take another look at the figure held by Roma on my Marcus Aurelius denarius. Here&#039;s a close-up:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1457276[/ATTACH]</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Admittedly, there&#039;s no lance. However, I would argue that the representation is intended to be schematic (as depictions of the Palladium often are, increasingly so as time went by) rather than finely detailed, and that despite the absence of the lance the figure has at least two attributes always found in depictions of the Palladium and never, to the best of my knowledge, found in depictions of Victory: a shield held closely against the left side of the body, seen edge-on, and the right arm bent at the elbow with the hand pointing up -- intended to evoke the lance. On the other hand, despite your suggestion to the contrary, I see no trace of wings and no trace of a wreath, both of which are attributes of Victory that are never found with the Palladium. Furthermore, in just about every depiction I have, and have seen, of Victory standing on someone&#039;s palm, the arm holding the wreath is held out straight rather than being bent at the elbow.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here&#039;s a typical portrayal of the Palladium on a Greek vase (from Wikipedia). Note the strong resemblance to the figure on my coin, in terms of the shield held against the body and the bent right arm. (The lance is barely visible, and much less prominent than those attributes.)</p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp;[ATTACH=full]1457282[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>As stated in my original post, I found only a handful of other specimens of my denarius on acsearch.&nbsp; (Some are TR P XX like mine, and some are TR P XIX.) Here are a few. I see the shield held against the body and the bent left arm on all of them, and the wreath and wings on none of them. (I haven&#039;t compared them side by side, but the first one looks like it might be a reverse die match to mine):</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1457285[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1457287[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1457289[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1457288[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1457290[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>(I see no spear point on any of them, either. So I do still lean towards the scepter interpretation.)</p><p><br /></p><p>By the way, Palladium vs. Victory aside, there are no &quot;variants&quot; among these specimens, Nomos AG&#039;s and others&#039; descriptions notwithstanding. Whatever is portrayed -- and I strongly believe that it&#039;s the Palladium -- I think it&#039;s the same on all the examples I&#039;ve seen.</p><p><br /></p><p>By contrast, here are a couple of my coins depicting Victory standing on someone&#039;s palm, from Carus and Diocletian. Wings aside (and they&#039;re not very clear on either), note the wreath and the fact that the arm holding the wreath is held straight out rather than bent at the elbow:</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="https://www.cointalk.com/attachments/carus-denarius-jpg-version-jpg.1225622/" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><img src="https://www.cointalk.com/attachments/new-combined-diocletian-ant-concordia-jpg.1438227/" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>I rest my case, and I hope I&#039;ve persuaded you to at least reconsider your identification.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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