DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51762#0103
HISTORICAL ROMAN COINS
The popular hero of the Minucia gens was L.
Minucius Augurinus, who as praefectus annonae in
439 b.c., when there was a serious famine, obtained
a supply of corn from abroad, and in three market
days lowered the price of corn to a maximum of one
as for a modius. The grateful people erected to him
a brazen statue on a column outside the Porta
Trigemina, everyone subscribing an uncia.1 The
column, with the statue on it, is represented on the
coin. The two figures at the sides of the monument
have been explained as other members of the family.
The man on the right, holding the augur’s wand, may
then be M. Minucius Faesus, one of the first plebeian
augurs to be elected after the passing of the lex
Ogulnia in 300 b.c.2 The man on the left may be
either the praefectus annonae himself—admiring his own
monument—or P. Minucius Augurinus, a still earlier
public benefactor, who as consul in 492 b.c. relieved a
famine by obtaining supplies from abroad.3 But it is
quite possible that the augur on the right is merely a
canting allusion to the moneyer’s cognomen, while
the figure on the left may also have some allusive
significance which escapes us.
The ears of corn flanking the monument need no
1 Plin. N. H. xviii. 4 ; xxxiv. 11. This, Pliny thinks, was perhaps
the first honour of the kind conferred by the people, not by the
Senate. Cp. Dion. Hal. Trepi &rtfiovXwv, p. xxxvi, ed. C. Mueller.
2 Liv. x. 9.
8 Liv. ii. 34.
63
The popular hero of the Minucia gens was L.
Minucius Augurinus, who as praefectus annonae in
439 b.c., when there was a serious famine, obtained
a supply of corn from abroad, and in three market
days lowered the price of corn to a maximum of one
as for a modius. The grateful people erected to him
a brazen statue on a column outside the Porta
Trigemina, everyone subscribing an uncia.1 The
column, with the statue on it, is represented on the
coin. The two figures at the sides of the monument
have been explained as other members of the family.
The man on the right, holding the augur’s wand, may
then be M. Minucius Faesus, one of the first plebeian
augurs to be elected after the passing of the lex
Ogulnia in 300 b.c.2 The man on the left may be
either the praefectus annonae himself—admiring his own
monument—or P. Minucius Augurinus, a still earlier
public benefactor, who as consul in 492 b.c. relieved a
famine by obtaining supplies from abroad.3 But it is
quite possible that the augur on the right is merely a
canting allusion to the moneyer’s cognomen, while
the figure on the left may also have some allusive
significance which escapes us.
The ears of corn flanking the monument need no
1 Plin. N. H. xviii. 4 ; xxxiv. 11. This, Pliny thinks, was perhaps
the first honour of the kind conferred by the people, not by the
Senate. Cp. Dion. Hal. Trepi &rtfiovXwv, p. xxxvi, ed. C. Mueller.
2 Liv. x. 9.
8 Liv. ii. 34.
63