Is the reverse of the Plancus referring to a contemporary painting?
Not sure - here is what the ever reliable Admiral
Smyth says about the
type:
PLANCVS.
Aurora, with wings and flowing robes, is guiding four spirited horses, emblematic of daybreak — or rather of that peculiar light by which the rising sun is preceded, and which Eos, or
Aurora, was supposed to bring up from the east, — the akasch, or fifth element of Hindoo physics. Here we have L. Plautius Plancus, who being adopted from the
Munatia gens by a
L. Plautius, took
his new relative's
praenomen as well as nomen. He was not
fortunate ; being included in the deadly proscription of the triumvirs, with the
full consent of
his contemptible brother Munatius Plancus, the
consul of B.C. 43
(see No. 47, Tablet x.), Plautius fled, and found concealment in the neighbourhood
of Salernum. Here he seemed safe, but the perfumed ointments which he used,
and other refinements, gave
his enemies a clue to
his lurking place ; when, to save
his slaves, who were being tortured to death because they would not betray him,
he voluntarily surrendered himself to
his merciless executioners.
These
denarii may have been devised B.C. 43, to record the noted
act of an ancestor: for it
seems that the musicians, being annoyed at the want of respect showed them by the
severe
censor, Appius
Claudius, made a strike, and went to Tibur to settle there. But
the people feeling the loss of these waits at ceremonies and rejoicings, C. Plautius,
the other
censor,
had them entertained at a great banquet, through a friend on
the spot, where, being made drunk, they were thrown into wagons, and
con- veyed into the middle of the
Roman forum, having their faces masked, that the
magistrates might not recognise the truants thus brought back against their
own decree (Ovid, Fast. vi. 651). As this welcome return occurred in the
morning,
Aurora is represented : but it was sufiiciently light to render infinite
amusement to the authorities and the populace, as also perhaps to themselves.
Persius might have said — as of
his intrepidly ignorant and braggart captain —
" Convulsive mirth on every cheek appears,
And every nose is wrinkled into sneers!"
