DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51762#0111
HISTORICAL ROMAN COINS
This coin was struck, probably about 62 b.c., by
Faustus Cornelius Sulla, son of the dictator by his
fourth wife, Caecilia Metella. The story of the
capture of Jugurtha is in all the history books. The
interest of the type is that it probably reproduces more
or less exactly the subject of a seal ring which Sulla,
in his pride, had made for himself, and used con-
stantly, much to the irritation of Marius.1 Bocchus
himself also dedicated in the temple of Capitoline
Jupiter some figures of Victory bearing trophies and
beside them a group in gold of the handing over of
Jugurtha to Sulla.2 The head of Diana on the obverse
of our coin alludes to the dictator’s especial cult of
the goddess,3 the lituus to his augurship.
The dictator is identified by the title FELIX, a
title which he did not finally adopt until after the
death of the younger Marius.4 Faustus, therefore, on
his coin commits a u chronological error ” like that of
which some critics have complained in connexion with
the coins of M. Aemilius Lepidus.5
1 Plut. Sulla, 3 : pv y ypacjxrj Bok^os p.lv TrapaStSors, ^vAAas
TrapaXapfSavan/ tov ’loyopOav. Id. Mar. 10 ; Praec. ger. reip. xii.;
Plin. N. H. xxxvii. 4. 9; Vai. Max. viii. 14. 4 (Rom.).
2 Plut. Mar. 32 ; Sulla, 6.
3 Veil. Paterc. ii. 25 : privileges granted after Sulla’s victory over
Norbanus to the shrine of Diana Tifatina near Capua. See also the
inscriptions cited by Wissowa in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencycl. v. 327.
4 Veil. Paterc. ii. 27.
5 See supra, p. 53.
71
This coin was struck, probably about 62 b.c., by
Faustus Cornelius Sulla, son of the dictator by his
fourth wife, Caecilia Metella. The story of the
capture of Jugurtha is in all the history books. The
interest of the type is that it probably reproduces more
or less exactly the subject of a seal ring which Sulla,
in his pride, had made for himself, and used con-
stantly, much to the irritation of Marius.1 Bocchus
himself also dedicated in the temple of Capitoline
Jupiter some figures of Victory bearing trophies and
beside them a group in gold of the handing over of
Jugurtha to Sulla.2 The head of Diana on the obverse
of our coin alludes to the dictator’s especial cult of
the goddess,3 the lituus to his augurship.
The dictator is identified by the title FELIX, a
title which he did not finally adopt until after the
death of the younger Marius.4 Faustus, therefore, on
his coin commits a u chronological error ” like that of
which some critics have complained in connexion with
the coins of M. Aemilius Lepidus.5
1 Plut. Sulla, 3 : pv y ypacjxrj Bok^os p.lv TrapaStSors, ^vAAas
TrapaXapfSavan/ tov ’loyopOav. Id. Mar. 10 ; Praec. ger. reip. xii.;
Plin. N. H. xxxvii. 4. 9; Vai. Max. viii. 14. 4 (Rom.).
2 Plut. Mar. 32 ; Sulla, 6.
3 Veil. Paterc. ii. 25 : privileges granted after Sulla’s victory over
Norbanus to the shrine of Diana Tifatina near Capua. See also the
inscriptions cited by Wissowa in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencycl. v. 327.
4 Veil. Paterc. ii. 27.
5 See supra, p. 53.
71