Ave!

Julia Domna, Denarius, Cybele & Lions reverse

AR 20mm/3.4gm    Rome mint, ca. 205 AD, struck under Caracalla.

Con/ Good Very Fine; boldly struck and well-centered to either side; lustrous with a lovely portrait and sharp reverse.

Obv/ IVLIA AVGVSTA; draped bust right

Rev/ MATER DEVM (= Mother of the Gods); Cybele, towered (Mural Crown), enthroned left between two lions, leaning on drum and holding branch & scepter.

Ref/ RIC Vol IVa 564 [caracalla]

Seller's Note/ Romans believed that Cybele, considered a Phrygian outsider even within her Greek cults, was the mother-goddess of ancient Troy (Ilium). Some of Rome's leading patrician families claimed Trojan ancestry; so the "return" of the Mother of all Gods to her once-exiled people would have been particularly welcome, even if her spouse and priesthood were not; its accomplishment would have reflected well on the principals involved and, in turn, on their descendants. The upper classes who sponsored the Magna Mater's festivals delegated their organization to the plebeian aediles, and honored her and each other with lavish, private festival banquets from which her Galli would have been conspicuously absent. Whereas in most of her Greek cults she dwelt outside the polis, in Rome she was the city's protector, contained within her Palatine precinct, along with her priesthood, at the geographical heart of Rome's most ancient religious traditions. She was promoted as patrician property; a Roman matron – albeit a strange one, "with a stone for a face" – who acted for the clear benefit of the Roman state.