City divinities

[Lion.Kanzen]

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In this post we are going to investigate the gods that symbolize the cultures and their iconography.

 

 

Roma(Rome)

 Roma was a female deity who personified the city of Rome and more broadly, the Roman state.[1] She was created and promoted to represent and propagate certain of Rome's ideas about itself, and to justify its rule. She was portrayed on coins, sculptures, architectural designs, and at official games and festivals. Images of Roma had elements in common with other goddesses, such as Rome's Minerva, her Greek equivalent Athena and various manifestations of Greek Tyches, who protected Greek city-states; among these, Roma stands dominant, over piled weapons that represent her conquests, and promising protection to the obedient. Her "Amazonian" iconography shows her "manly virtue" (virtus) as fierce mother of a warrior race, augmenting rather than replacing local goddesses. On some coinage of the Roman Imperial era, she is shown as a serene advisor, partner and protector of ruling emperors. In Rome, the Emperor Hadrian built and dedicated a gigantic temple to her as Roma Aeterna ("Eternal Rome"), and to Venus Felix, ("Venus the Bringer of Good Fortune"), emphasising the sacred, universal and eternal nature of the empire

 

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

continuing with Roma.

 

A helmeted figure on Roman coins of 280-276 and 265-242 BC is sometimes interpreted as Roma but the identification is contestable.[5] Other early Roman coinage shows a warlike "Amazon" type, possibly Roma but in Mellor's opinion, more likely a genius than dea (goddess). During the late Second Punic war and the Pyrrhic war, Rome issued coins with a Phrygian helmeted head; some are stamped 'Roma". In later coin issues, Roma wears varieties of the Attic helmet, the standard pattern for Roman army officers. In cases where clear coin legends are lacking, identification has been unresolved. Other female members of Romes's official pantheon were also helmeted, including Bellona, and Minerva, the latter being equivalent to Greek Athena, who is believed by some scholars to be Roma's original.[6]

 

The earliest, more-or-less unequivocal coin identification of Roma is a silver stater of c275 BC issued by Rome's ethnically Greek allies at Locri, on the Italian peninsula. It shows an enthroned woman with shield and other war-gear, clearly labelled as Roma. Another woman, labelled as Pistis (Greek equivalent to Roman Fides, or "good faith"), stands before Roma with a crown of leaves raised above her head. A Roman denarius of 114/115 shows Roma with Romulus, Remus and the she-Wolf, the mythological beast who fostered them, and nourished them with her milk; the coin image implies that Roma has protected and nourished Rome since its very foundation. Her "Amazonian" appearance recalls the fierce, barbaric, bare-breasted Amazons who fought in the Trojan war alongside the Trojans, supposed ancestors of the Romans. In the late Republican and early Imperial era, Roman literature presents Roma as one of the Roman people's several "Great Mothers", who included Venus and Cybele.[4] Ennius personified the "Roman fatherland" as Roma: for Cicero, she was the "Roman state", but neither of these are dea Roma.[7] Though her Roman ancestry is possible - perhaps merely her name and the ideas it evoked, according to Mellor - she emerges as a Greek deity, whose essential iconography and character were already established in Italy, Magna Graecia and Rome