244 | Roman Republic

Automatically generated translation

GENE FURY. Denarius. (Ar. 3.94g/19mm). 63 BC Rome. (Crawford 414/1; FFC 735). Obv: Head of Ceres crowned with spikes to the right, grain in front, spike behind, between: III-VIR, legend below: BROCCHI. Extremely Fine. Nice specimen, scarce like that.

It is known that Ceres is the goddess of agriculture, she is also related to fertility, but what is less known about this goddess, of Italian origin, is her association since the beginning of time with the plebeian cause. It is, therefore, a politicized image that played an important symbolic role in the political struggle of the last years of the Republic, establishing itself as the goddess of the mob par excellence. Such was its strength in Roman society at the time that in the last years of the republic, patrician politicians also began to use the image for their own interests. A good example of this is its use among the Furia gens, one of the oldest and noblest Roman patrician families. But not only them, Julius Caesar himself, already in imperial times, attributed his success to Ceres in an attempt to attract the Roman plebs for his purposes.