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Roman Lead Sol Invictus “Sun-God” Plaque
circa 270-300 A.D. time of Roman emperors Aurelian and Probus
Measures approximately 9.0 x 7.7 x 0.2 centimeters
Weighs 126.35 grams
This plaque is from circa the time of Aurelian, most likely,
having worked with coins from that time period. There are coin designs of
emperor Aurelian, whom was emperor 270-275 A.D. that are similar to those
depicted on this plaque. At the very top, you have Sol Invictus, the sun-god or
Roman religious in a facing quadriga (four horse chariot). Right below Sol
Invictus, to right, there is a person on a horse, likely emperor Aurelian on
horseback standing left with a figure crowning him with wreath. Right
below the emperor on horseback, it looks like the Dioscuri twins (Gemini)
facing, side by side. There is a goddess at the very center, perhaps Cybele or
Luna. To left of the goddess is a soldier with a spear and shield who wears a
helmet, standing right, with a figure on horse to right o f him. Below that is
what looks like a dolphin, or perhaps a fish, most likely a dolphin (as it was
sacred to Apollo). At center is a firgure in front of altar, which looks to have
2 fish atop it. To left of that altar is a bust of Harpokrates, the Greek
version of Horus, or Anubis. To right of Harpokrates it looks like the Satyr
Marsyas being flayed (skineed) while hanging from tree. Vase at center below. An
amazing piece that features a great many
Provenance: From private collection in the United States of America.
Ownership History: From private collection in the United States, bought in
private sale in the United States of America.
You are bidding on the exact
item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime
Guarantee of Authenticity.
or
In late
Greek mythology
as developed in
Ptolemaic Alexandria
, Harpocrates (Ancient Greek:
Ἁρποκράτης) is the
god
of silence. Harpocrates was adapted by the
Greeks
from the
Egyptian child god
Horus
. To the
ancient Egyptians
, Horus represented the
newborn Sun, rising each day at dawn. When the
Greeks
conquered Egypt under
Alexander the Great
, they transformed the
Egyptian Horus into their
Hellenistic
god
known as Harpocrates, a rendering
from Egyptian
Har-pa-khered
or Heru-pa-khered
(meaning “Horus the Child”).
Anubis (//
or
/
/;[2]
Ancient Greek
:
Ἄνουβις) is the
Greek
name of a
jackal-headed
god associated with
mummification
and the
afterlife
in
ancient Egyptian religion
.
Like many
ancient Egyptian deities
, Anubis assumed
different roles in various contexts. Depicted as a protector of graves as early
as the
First Dynasty
(c. 3100 – c. 2890 BC), Anubis
was also an
embalmer
. By the
Middle Kingdom
(c. 2055 – 1650 BC), Anubis was
replaced by Osiris
in his role as Lord of the
underworld
. One of his prominent roles was as a
god who ushered souls into the afterlife
. He
attended the
weighing scale
during the “Weighing of the
Heart,” in which it was determined whether a soul would be allowed to enter the
realm of the dead. Despite being one of the most ancient and “one of the most
frequently depicted and mentioned gods” in the
Egyptian pantheon
, however, Anubis played
almost no role in
Egyptian myths
.
Anubis was depicted in black, a color that symbolized both rebirth and the
discoloration of the corpse after embalming. Anubis is associated with
Wepwawet
(also called Upuaut), another Egyptian
god portrayed with a dog’s head or in canine form, but with grey or white fur.
Historians assume that the two figures were eventually combined. Anubis’ female
counterpart is Anput
. His daughter is the serpent goddess
Kebechet
.
A
quadriga (Latin
quadri-, four, and iugum, yoke) is a car or
chariot
drawn by four
horses
abreast (the
Roman Empire
‘s equivalent of
Ancient Greek
tethrippon
). It was raced in the
Ancient Olympic Games
and other contests. It is
represented in profile as the chariot of
gods and heroes
on
Greek vases
and in
bas-relief
. The quadriga was adopted in
ancient Roman
chariot racing
. Quadrigas were emblems of
triumph;
Victory
and
Fame
often are depicted as the triumphant woman
driving it. In
classical mythology
, the quadriga is the
chariot of the gods;
Apollo
was depicted driving his quadriga across
the heavens, delivering daylight and dispersing the night. The word quadriga
Sol Invictus (“Unconquered Sun”) was the official
sun god
of the later
Roman Empire
and a patron of soldiers. In 274
the Roman emperor
Aurelian
made it an official
cult alongside the traditional Roman cults. Scholars disagree whether
the new deity was a refoundation of the ancient
Latin
cult of
Sol
,
a revival of the cult of
Elagabalus
or completely new.The god was
favored by emperors after Aurelian and appeared on their coins until
Constantine
.The last inscription referring to
Sol Invictus dates to 387 AD and there were enough devotees in the 5th century
that
Augustine
found it necessary to preach against
them.
It is commonly claimed that the date of 25 December for
Christmas
was selected in order to correspond
with the Roman festival of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, or “Birthday of
the Unconquered Sun”, but this view is challenged
Invictus as
epithet
Invictus
(“Unconquered, Invincible”) was an
epithet
for
several deities
of
classical Roman religion
, including the supreme
deity
Jupiter
, the war god
Mars
,
Hercules
,
Apollo
and
Silvanus
.[8]
Invictus was in use from the 3rd century BC, and was well-established as
a
cult
title when applied to
Mithras
from the 2nd century onwards. It has a
clear association[vague]
with solar deities and solar monism; as such, it became the preferred epithet of
Rome’s traditional
Sol
and the novel, short-lived Roman state cult
to
Elagabalus
, an
Emesan
solar deity who headed Rome’s official
pantheon under his
namesake emperor
.
The earliest dated use of Sol invictus is in a dedication from Rome,
AD 158. Another, stylistically dated to the 2nd century AD, is inscribed on a
Roman
phalera
: “inventori lucis soli invicto
augusto” (to the contriver of light, sol invictus augustus ). Here “augustus”
is most likely a further epithet of Sol as “august” (an elevated being, divine
or close to divinity), though the association of Sol with the Imperial house
would have been unmistakable and was already established in iconography and
stoic monism. These are the earliest attested examples of Sol as invictus,
but in AD 102 a certain
Anicetus
restored a shrine of Sol; Hijmans
(2009, 486, n. 22) is tempted “to link Anicetus’ predilection for Sol with his
name, the
Latinized
form of the Greek word ἀνίκητος,
which means invictus“.
Cybele
(Phrygian:
Matar Kubileya/Kubeleya “Kubeleyan Mother”, perhaps “Mountain
Mother”;
Lydian
Kuvava;
Greek
: Kybele,) was an originally
Anatolian
mother goddess
. Little is known of her oldest
Anatolian cults, other than her association with mountains, hawks and lions. She
may have been Phrygia
‘s state deity; her Phrygian cult was
adopted and adapted by Greek colonists of
Asia Minor
and spread from there to mainland
Greece and its more distant
western colonies
from around the 6th century
BCE.
In Greece, Cybele met with a mixed reception. She was partially assimilated
to aspects of the Earth-goddess
Gaia
, her
Minoan
equivalent
Rhea
, and the Corn-Mother goddess
Demeter
. Some city-states, notably
Athens
, evoked her as a protector, but her most
celebrated Greek rites and processions show her as an essentially foreign,
exotic mystery-goddess who arrives in a lion-drawn chariot to the accompaniment
of wild music, wine, and a disorderly, ecstatic following. Uniquely in Greek
religion, she had a
transgender
or
eunuch
mendicant
priesthood. Many of her Greek cults
included rites to a divine Phrygian castrate shepherd-consort
Attis
, who was probably a Greek invention. In
Greece, Cybele is associated with
mountains
, town and city walls, fertile nature,
and wild animals, especially
lions.
In Rome, Cybele was known as Magna Mater (“Great Mother”). The Roman State
adopted and developed a particular form of her cult, and claimed her
conscription as a key religious component in their success against Carthage
during the Punic Wars
.
Roman mythographers
reinvented her as a
Trojan goddess, and thus an ancestral goddess of the Roman people by
way of the Trojan prince
Aeneas
. With Rome’s eventual
hegemony
over the Mediterranean world,
Romanised forms of Cybele’s cults spread throughout the Roman Empire. The
meaning and morality of her cults and priesthoods were topics of debate and
dispute in Greek and Roman literature, and remain so in modern scholarship.
In
Greek
and
Roman mythology
, Castor and Pollux
or Polydeuces were twin brothers, together known as the Dioscuri.
Their mother was
Leda
, but Castor was the mortal son of
Tyndareus
, the king of Sparta, and Pollux the
divine son of Zeus
, who seduced or raped Leda in the guise of
a swan (Greek myths concerning divine sex are often vague on the issue of female
consent). Though accounts of their birth are varied, they are sometimes said to
have been born from an egg, along with their twin sisters
Helen of Troy
and
Clytemnestra
.
In Latin the twins are also known as the Gemini or Castores.
When Castor was killed, Pollux asked Zeus to let him share his own immortality
with his twin to keep them together, and they were transformed into the
constellation
Gemini
. The pair was regarded as the patrons of
sailors, to whom they appeared as
St. Elmo’s fire
, and were also associated with
horsemanship.
They are sometimes called the Tyndaridae or Tyndarids, later
seen as a reference to their father and stepfather
Tyndareus
.
Read more about the Dioscuri here
In
Greek mythology
, the
satyr
Marsyas (gr.
Μαρσύας) is a central figure in two
stories involving music: in one, he picked up the double flute (aulos)
that had been abandoned by
Athena
and played it; in the other, he
challenged Apollo
to a contest of music and lost his hide
and life. In
Antiquity
, literary sources often emphasise the
hubris
of Marsyas and the justice of his
punishment.
In one strand of modern comparative
mythography
, the domination of Marsyas by
Apollo is regarded as an example of myth that recapitulates a supposed
supplanting by the
Olympian pantheon
of an earlier
“Pelasgian”
religion of
chthonic
heroic
ancestors and
nature spirits
. Marsyas was a devoté of the
ancient
Mother Goddess
Rhea
/Cybele,
and his episodes are situated by the mythographers in
Celaenae
(or Kelainai) in
Phrygia
(today, the town of
Dinar
in
Turkey
), at the main source of the
Meander
(the river
Menderes
).
When a genealogy was applied to him, Marsyas was the son of
Olympus
(son of
Heracles
and
Euboea
, daughter of
Thespius
), or of
Oeagrus
, or of Hyagnis. Olympus was,
alternatively, said to be Marsyas’ son or pupil.
Among the Romans, Marsyas was cast as the inventor of
augury
and a proponent of free speech (the
philosophical concept παρρησία, “parrhesia“)
and “speaking truth to power.” The earliest known representation of Marsyas at
Rome stood for at least 300 years in the
Roman Forum
near or in the
comitium
, the space for political activity. He
was depicted as a silen
, carrying a
wineskin
on his left shoulder and raising his
right arm. The statue was regarded as an indicium libertatis, a symbol of
liberty, and was associated with demonstrations of the
plebs
, or common people. It often served as
a sort of kiosk
Marsyas served as a minister for Dionysus or Bacchus, who was
identified by the Romans with
their
Father Liber
, one of three deities in the
Aventine Triad
, along with
Ceres
and Libera (identified with
Persephone
). These gods were regarded as
concerning themselves specially with the welfare of the plebs. The
freedom that the
ecstasies
of
Dionysian worship
represented took on a
political meaning in Rome as the
libertas that distinguished the free from
the enslaved. The
Liberalia
, celebrated March 17 in honor of
Liber, was a time of speaking freely, as the poet and playwright
Gnaeus Naevius
declared: “At the Liberalia
games we enjoy free speech.” Naevius, however, was arrested for his
invectivess
Marsyas was sometimes considered a king and contemporary of
Faunus
, portrayed by
Vergil
as a native Italian ruler at the time of
Aeneas
.
Servius
, in his
commentary
on the
Aeneid
, says that Marsyas sent Faunus
envoys who showed techniques of augury to the Italians. The plebeian
gens of the
Marcii
claimed that they were descended from
Marsyas.
Gaius Marcius Rutilus
, who rose to power from
the plebs
, is credited with having dedicated
the statue that stood in the Roman forum, most likely in 294 BC, when he became
the first plebeian
censor
and added the
cognomen
Censorinus to the family name
. Marcius Rutilus
was also among the first plebeian augurs,
co-optedd
into their
college
in 300, and so the mythical teacher of
augury was an apt figure to represent him.
In 213 BC, two years after suffering one of the worst military defeats in its
history at the
Battle of Cannae
, Rome was in the grip of a
reactionary fear that led to excessive
religiosity
. The
games in the Greek manner for Apollo
senate
, which the
senate
and
elected officials
would control. The prophecy
was attributed to Gnaeus Marcius, reputed to be a descendant of Marsyas. The
games were duly carried out, but the Romans failed to bring the continuing
wars with the Carthaginians
to a victorious
conclusion until they heeded a second prophecy and imported the worship of the
Phrygian Great Mother
, whose song Marsyas was said to
have composed; the song had further relevance in that it was also credited by
the Phrygians with protecting them from invaders. The power relations between
Marsyas and Apollo reflected the continuing
Struggle of the Orders
between the elite and
the common people, expressed in political terms by
optimates
and
populares
. The arrest of Naevius for
exercising free speech also took place during this period.
Another descendant of Marcius Rutilus,
L. Marcius Censorinus
, issued coins depicting
the statue of Marsyas, at a time when the
augural college
was the subject of political
controversy during the
Sullan civil wars of the 80s BC
[32]
On the coin, Marsyas wears a
Phrygian cap
or
pilleus, an emblem of liberty. This Marcius
Censorinus was killed by
Sulla
and his head displayed outside
Praeneste
. Sulla’s legislative program
attempted to curtail power invested in the people, particularly restricting the
powers of the plebeian tribunes
, and to restore the dominance
of the senate and the privileges of
patricians
.
Marsyas was also claimed as the
eponym
of the
Marsi
, one of the ancient peoples of Italy. The
Social War of 91–88 BC
, in which the
Italian peoples
fought to advance their status
as citizens under Roman rule, is sometimes called the Marsic War from the
leadership of the Marsi. The Roman
coloniae
Paestum
and
Alba Fucens
, along with other Italian cities,
set up their own statues of Marsyas as assertions of their political status.
During the
Principate
, Marsyas became a subversive symbol
in opposition to
Augustus
, whose propaganda systematically
associated him with the silens’ torturer Apollo. Augustus’s daughter
Julia
held nocturnal assemblies at the statue,
and crowned it to defy her father. The poet
Ovid, who was ultimately exiled by Augustus, twice tells the story of
Marsyas’s flaying by Apollo, in his epic
Metamorphoses
and in the
Fasti
, the calendrical poem left unfinished
at his death. Although the immediate cause of Ovid’s exile remains one of
literary history’s great mysteries, Ovid himself says that a “poem and
transgression” were contributing factors; his poetry tests the boundaries of
permissible free speech during Rome’s transition from
republic
to
imperial monarchy
.
Pliny
indicates that in the 1st century AD, the
painting Marsyas religatus (“Marsyas Bound”), by
Zeuxis of Heraclea
, could be viewed at the
Temple of Concordia
in Rome. The goddess
Concordia
, like the Greek
Harmonia
, was a
personification
of both
musical harmony as it was understood in antiquity
,
and of social order
, as expressed by
Cicero
‘s phrase concordia ordinum. The
apparent incongruity of exhibiting the tortured silen in a temple devoted to
harmony has been interpreted in modern scholarship as a warning against
criticizing authority.
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