A fascinating coin David. Hard for us to imagine an emperor would deliberately produce an image of a feminine divinity that resembled
his own, but it my be that the ancients
had a more nuanced understanding of the divine than we typically have today.
Such a thing is perhaps seen in the well known gold
aureus of
Caesar, with the
portrait of
Venus on the
obverse. To my eye the goddess of love looks remarkably masculine- even
Caesar like! I have never read of anyone remarking on it, so it might be just me seeing things. But isn't it plausible the image was made that way to better link her to the
gens Julia, which claimed descent from the
Trojan prince
Aeneas, supposedly the son of the goddess Aphrodite (
Venus).
I'm posting an example of the
aureus (not mine unfortunately!) it illustrate my case.
Could the
Flavian likeness on a
provincial city-goddess be to show something similar?
Best regards,
Steve
