Numism > Reading For the Advanced Ancient Coin Collector

Virgil and the Aeneas Denarius

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Jochen:
Curtis, you are right when you say myths are apriori alogical and had not to be compatible! So let me say the moneyer has taken that variant of the myth that matches the claims of the Julian gens!

Jochen

Rhetor:
If, as Jochen says, the moneyer reinforces the "claims of the Julian gens," I still wonder why Virgil opts for a different tradition than the one circulating--literally--in the form of the coinage of Augustus' adoptive father.  Virgil too was about furthering the claims of the Julian gens, and offering some pro-Augustan propaganda (though I think the Aeneid is much more complex than that).

As to the prospect that Virgil meant to include the Palladium with the penates, I suppose it's possible, but I don't find it convincing.  In Book 2 Sinon makes it pretty clear that the Trojan Horse has been left to replace the Palladium, and there's no indication that the Greeks have returned the Palladium too, along with the gift of the Horse.  In short, Virgil does not restore the Palladium to the Trojans to have it in place to be taken away later.  Plus, Virgil is anachronistically attributing Roman penates/hearthgods to the ancient Trojans as a way of suggesting/fabricating an aetiology of penates veneration in Rome by all Romans.   There's only one Palladium, in contrast.  

Maybe the aetiology of penates veneration in Rome is my ultimate answer, but I still find it remarkable that Virgil would alter such a common image which was consciously promulgated by the father of the man for whom the epic was written.  In short, why is he messing with Julius Caesar's iconography?  Wouldn't that annoy Augustus?

Rhetor

Rhetor:
BTW, this is what Bernini does with the Virgil passage...

slokind:
I must agree  with both Jochen and Curtis, while congratulating Rhetor for contributing the Bernini detail--since this is the kind of erudition that the Renaissance and 17th century excelled in.  While the sources differ as to who took the Palladium (and note, too, how many other places claimed having it), Household Gods are Lares and Penates.  They belong to a different, domestic level of religion, exactly analogous to those Rachel sat on, having secreted them in the camels' saddle bags (Genesis, ch. 30-something).  When you move a gens or any sort of clan to a new homeland, you must bring them with you.  The Palladium was Troy's; it is civic rather than domestic.  For the installation of the Lares and Penates in their new Home, see the Ara Pacis Augustae.
Pat L.

Robert_Brenchley:
Genesis 31:33-5. The story is that Rachel had stolen her father's household gods when she left with her husband. The father is represented as a conniving untrustworthy character who gets no sympathy. Father chased after the couple and caught them, then searched their camp swearing to kill whoever had them. Rachel was menstruating at the time, or said she was anyway, which made ritually unclean; nobody could touch her or anything she'd touched without becoming unclean themselves. So she sat on the bag containing the gods, which naturally remained undiscovered.

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