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Message:: [QUOTE="GinoLR, post: 24621348, member: 128351"]One of the main Caesarian propaganda themes struck on Caesar's coinage is his Pietas. Above everything else, a Roman imperator must be pius, so the gods will favor him and his men. This is why Pietas is very often depicted on his coinage. Usually, Pietas is symbolized by a veiled goddess, or most often by sacrificial or sacerdotal implements : the jug, the simplulum, the lituus, the flamen's cap with its apex, the aspergillum, the axe. Before Caesar, Sulla had already minted denarii with such symbols. The Aeneas scene on the OP coin is a new symbolic depiction of Pietas, and in the same time an evocation of Caesar's personal ancestors. The gens Julia claimed descent from Aeneas, thus from Anchises and the goddess Venus. On this coin Julius Caesar pays tribute to three of his personal ancestors: Venus on obverse, Anchises and Aeneas on reverse. By doing so, he does what most of the young money magistrates of Republican Rome used to do when choosing a personal type for their denarii. But Aeneas running from Troy carrying the Palladium and his old father on his back is the very image of Pietas. They were two forms of pietas : the pietas erga deos (piety toward the gods) and the pietas erga parentes (piety toward one's parents). By refusing to leave the Palladium and his own father behind, Aeneas does both. This is why Virgil will later call the Trojan hero "Pius Aeneas" (Aeneid I, 378).[/QUOTE]