One original ancient Roman silver coin of: Geta: Caesar 198-209 AD; Co-Augustus with Caracalla 209-212 AD. Murdered by Caracalla in AD 212

Anchialos, Thrace.

AE 17.5mm. 3.65gm. (VF) Well centered nice specimen. Original brown-green patina and tone.

Obv./  AV K Π CE ΓETAC, draped and cuirassed bust right .

Rev./ AΓCIAΛEΩN, three stars in crescent moon.

Original ancient Roman coin as pictured and described above.

Authenticity guaranteed.

Publius Septimius Geta (March 7, 189 –December 26, 211 ), was a Roman Emperor co-ruling with his father Septimius Severus and his older brother Caracalla from 209 to his death.

Geta was the younger son of Septimius Severus by his second wife Julia Domna . Geta was born in Rome, at a time when his father was only a provincial governor at the service of emperor Commodus .

Geta was always in a place secondary to his older brother Lucius, the heir known as Caracalla. Perhaps due to this, the relations between the two were difficult from their early years. Conflicts were constant and often required the mediation of their mother. To appease his youngest son, Septimius Severus gave Geta the title of Augustus in 209. During the campaign against the Britons of the early 3rd century, the imperial propaganda publicized a happy family that shared the responsibilities of rule. Caracalla was his father's second in command, Julia Domna the trusted counsellor and Geta had administrative and bureaucratic duties. Truth was that the rivalry and antipathy between the brothers was far from being improved. 

Joint Emperor

When Septimius Severus died in Eboracum in the beginning of 211, Caracalla and Geta were proclaimed joint emperors and returned to Rome.

Regardless, the shared throne was not a success: the brothers argued about every decision, from law to political appointments. Later sources speculate about the desire of the two of splitting the empire in two halves. By the end of the year, the situation was unbearable. Caracalla tried to murder Geta during the festival of Saturnalia without success. Later in December he arranged a meeting with his brother in his mother's apartments, and had him murdered in her arms by centurions .

Following Geta's assassination, Caracalla damned his memoryy and ordered his name to be removed from all inscriptions. The now sole emperor also took the opportunity to get rid of his political enemies, on the grounds of conspiracy with the deceased. Cassius Dio   stated that around 20,000 persons of both sexes were killed and/or proscribed during this time.

 

 

In Greek and Roman mythology , a palladium or palladion was an image of great antiquity on which the safety of a city was said to depend. "Palladium" especially signified the wooden statue (xoanon) of Pallas Athena that Odysseus and Diomedes stole from the citadel of Troy and which was later taken to the future site of Rome by Aeneas . The Roman story is related in Virgil 's Aeneid and other works. In English , since circa 1600, the word "palladium" has meant anything believed to provide protection or safety — a safeguard.

Origins

The Trojan Palladium was said to be a wooden image of Pallas (whom the Greeks identified with Athena and the Romans with Minerva) and to have fallen from heaven in answer to the prayer of Ilus, the founder of Troy.

"The most ancient talismanic effigies of Athena," Ruck and Staples report, "...were magical found objects, faceless pillars of Earth in the old manner, before the Goddess was anthropomorphized and given form through the intervention of human intellectual meddling."

 Arrival at Troy

The arrival at Troy of the Palladium, fashioned by Athena in remorse for the death of Pallas, as part of the city's founding myth , was variously referred to by Greeks, from the seventh century BC onwards. The Palladium was linked to the Samothrace mysteries through the pre-Olympian figure of an Elektra, mother of Dardanus, progenitor of the Trojan royal line, and of Iasion , founder of the Samothrace mysteries. Whether Electra had come to Athena's shrine of the Palladium as a pregnant suppliant and a god cast it into the territory of Ilium, because it had been profaned by the hands of a woman who was not a virgin, or whether Elektra carried it herself or whether it was given directly to Dardanus vary in sources and scholia . In Ilion, King Ilus was blinded for touching the image to preserve it from a burning temple.

 Theft

During the Trojan War , the importance of the Palladium to Troy was said to have been revealed to the Greeks by Helenus , the prophetic son of Priam . After Paris' death, Helenus left the city but was captured by Odysseus. The Greeks somehow managed to persuade the warrior seer to reveal the weakness of Troy. The Greeks learned from Helenus, that Troy would not fall while the Palladium, image or statue of Athena, remained within Troy's walls. The difficult task of stealing this sacred statue again fell upon the shoulders of Odysseus and Diomedes. Since Troy could not be captured while it safeguarded this image, the Greeks Diomedes and Odysseus made their way to the citadel in Troy by a secret passage and carried it off. In this way the Greeks were then able to enter Troy and lay it waste using the deceit of the Trojan Horse .

Odysseus, some say, went by night to Troy, and leaving Diomedes waiting, disguised himself and entered the city as a beggar. There he was recognized by Helen , who told him where the Palladium was. Diomedes then climbed the wall of Troy and entered the city. Together, the two friends killed several guards and one or more priests of Athena's temple and stole the Palladium "with their bloodstained hands". Diomedes is generally regarded as the person who physically removed the Palladium and carried it away to the ships. There are several statues and many ancient drawings of him with the Palladium.

According to the Epic Cycle narrative of the Little Iliad , on the way to the ships, Odysseus plotted to kill Diomedes and claim the Palladium (or perhaps the credit for gaining it) for himself. He raised his sword to stab Diomedes in the back. Diomedes was alerted to the danger by glimpsing the gleam of the sword in the moonlight. He disarmed Odysseus, tied his hands, and drove him along in front, beating his back with the flat of his sword. From this action was said to have arisen the Greek proverbial expression "Diomedes' necessity", applied to those who act under compulsion. Because Odysseus was essential for the destruction of Troy, Diomedes refrained from punishing him.

Diomedes took the Palladium with him when he left Troy. According to some stories, he brought it to Italy. Some say that it was stolen from him on the way.

 Arrival at Rome

According to various versions of this legend the Trojan Palladium found its way to Athens , or Argos , or Sparta (all in Greece ), or Rome in Italy . To this last city it was either brought by Aeneas the exiled Trojan (Diomedes, in this version, having only succeeded in stealing an imitation of the statue) or surrendered by Diomedes himself. It was kept there in the Temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum .

Pliny the Elder said that Lucius Caecilius Metellus had been blinded by fire when he rescued the Palladium from the Temple of Vesta in 241 BC, an episode alluded to in Ovid and Valerius Maximus

When the controversial emperor Elagabalus (reigned 218-222) transferred the most sacred relics of Roman religion from their respective shrines to the Elagabalium , the Palladium was among them.

In Late Antiquity , it was rumored that the Palladium was transferred from Rome to Constantinople by Constantine the Great and buried under the Column of Constantine in his forum. Such a move would have undermined the primacy of Rome, and was naturally seen as a move by Constantine to legitimize his reign.

 

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