The last coin of 2012. It's
still in the mail, but I've
had my eye on this coin for a couple years. I bid on it in the
auction that it was last sold in, but lost to a better bidder. Time for it to come to it's new
home.
M. Plaetorius M.f. Cestianus.
Denarius 69, AR 3.89 g. Draped female
bust r.; behind, unidentified symbol.
Rev. M PLAETORI
CEST S·C Half-length
bust of
Sors facing upon tablet inscribed
SORS.
Babelon Plaetoria 10.
Sydenham 801.
Crawford 405/2.
The
Romans undertook the imaginative task of deifying the virtues, qualities and affections of the mind. These they have represented by various attributes on monuments, and principally on their coinage which is frequently the most survivable of ancient artefacts. Among such allegorical divinities was this personification of
Sors (chance or
hazard), which has sometimes been confused with Destiny or
Fate. The Sortes Praenestiae, were
tesserae, or tablets of oak inscribed with sentences of antique
writing, and shut up in a casket of olive
wood. It was believed that, under the secret guidance of the goddess
Fortuna,
Sors drew these lots by the hand of a child, and it was supposed to learn its
fate by the reading of what was written on the tablets by one of the ministers called sortilege, or fortune-tellers. (background lifted from a
Roma Numismatics auction)
