54Item: S88015

Roman Republic Cn. Lentulus moneyer
Silver Denarius 17mm (3.86 grams) Spain mint, struck circa 76-75 B.C.
Reference: Cornelia 54; B.M.C., Spain, 52; Syd. 752; Craw. 393/1a
G•P•R above diademed bust of the Genius of the Roman people draped bright, scepter on shoulder.
EX• S•C. divided by terrestrial globe between rudder and scepter; CN•LEN•Q in exergue below.
This coin was struck when the moneyer was acting as paymaster to Pompey's troops in Spain.

 

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The Genius was a protection spirit, analogous to the guardian angels invoked by the Church of Rome. The belief in such spirits existed in Greece and at Rome. The Greeks called them Daemons, and appear to have believed in them from the earliest times, though Homer does not mention them. Hesiod says that the Daemons were 30,000 in number, and that they dwelled on earth unseen by mortals, as the ministers of Zeus, and as the guardians of men and justice. He further conceives them to be the souls of the righteous men who lived in the golden age of the world. The Greek philosophers took up this idea, and developed a complete theory of daemons. Thus we read in Plato, that daemons are assinged to men at the moment of their birth, that they accompany men through life, and after death conduct their souls to Hades. Pindar, in several passages of the spirit watching over the fate of man from the hour of his birth. The daemons are further described as ministers and companions of the gods, who carry the prayers of men to the gods, and the gifts of the gods to men, and accordingly float in immense numbers in the space between heaven and earth. There was also a distinct class of daemons, who were exclusively the ministers of the gods.

The Romans seem to have received their notions respecting the genii from the Etruscans, though the name Genius itself is Latin (it is connected with gi-gn-o, gen-ui, and equivalent in meaning to generator or father). The genii of the Romans are the powers which produce life (dii genitales), and accompany man through it as his second or spiritual self. They were further not confined to man, but every living being, animal as well as man, and every place had its genius. Every human being at his birth obtained (sortitur) a genius, who he worshipped as sanctus et sanctissimus deus, especially on his birthday, with libations of wine, incense, and garlands of flowers. The bridal bed was sacred to the genius, on account of his connection with generation, and the bed itself was called lectus genialis. On other merry occasions, also , sacrifices were offered to the genius, and to indulge in merriment was not unfrequently expressed by genio indulgere, genium curare, or placarae. The whole body of the Roman people had its own genius, who is often seen represented on coins of Hadrian and Trajan. He was worshipped on sad as well as joyous occasions; thus, sacrifices were offered to him at the beginning of the 2nd year of the war with Hannibal. The genii are usually represented in works of art as winged beings. The genius of a place appears in the form of a serpent eating fruit placed before him.

Pompey (Latin nominative Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus), also known as or Pompey the Great (Classical Latin abbreviation: CN·POMPEIVS·CN·F·SEX·N·MAGNVS) (September 29, 106 BC - September 29, 48 BC), was a military and political leader of the late Roman Republic. He came from a wealthy Italian provincial background, and established himself in the ranks of Roman nobility by successful leadership in several campaigns. Sulla addressed him by the cognomen Magnus (the Great) and he was awarded three triumphs.

Pompey joined his rival Marcus Licinius Crassus and his ally Julius Caesar in the unofficial military-political alliance known as the First Triumvirate. The first triumvirate was validated by the marriage between Julia (daughter of Julius Caesar) and Pompey. After the deaths of Crassus and Julia, Pompey's wife and Caesar's daughter, Pompey sided with the optimates, the conservative and aristocratic faction of the Roman Senate. Pompey and Caesar contended for the leadership of the Roman state leading to a civil war. When Caesar defeated him at the battle of Pharsalus he sought refuge in Egypt, where he was assassinated. His career and defeat are significant in Rome's subsequent transformation from Republic to Principate and Empire.

The Roman Republic (Latin: Res Publica Romana) was the period of the ancient Roman civilization when the government operated as a republic.

It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 509 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and advised by a senate. A complex constitution gradually developed, centered on the principles of a separation of powers and checks and balances. Except in times of dire national emergency, public offices were limited to one year, so that, in theory at least, no single individual could dominate his fellow citizens.

Roman provinces on the eve of the assassination of Julius Caesar, 44 BC

Roman society was hierarchical. The evolution of the Constitution of the Roman Republic was heavily influenced by the struggle between the patricians, Rome's land-holding aristocracy, who traced their ancestry back to the early history of the Roman kingdom, and the plebeians, the far more numerous citizen-commoners. Over time, the laws that gave patricians exclusive rights to Rome's highest offices were repealed or weakened, and a new aristocracy emerged from among the plebeian class. The leaders of the Republic developed a strong tradition and morality requiring public service and patronage in peace and war, making military and political success inextricably linked.

During the first two centuries of its existence the Republic expanded through a combination of conquest and alliance, from central Italy to the entire Italian peninsula. By the following century it included North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, Greece, and what is now southern France. Two centuries after that, towards the end of the 1st century BC, it included the rest of modern France, and much of the eastern Mediterranean. By this time, despite the Republic's traditional and lawful constraints against any individual's acquisition of permanent political powers, Roman politics was dominated by a small number of Roman leaders, their uneasy alliances punctuated by a series of civil wars.

The victor in one of these civil wars, Octavian, reformed the Republic as a Principate, with himself as Rome's "first citizen" (princeps). The Senate continued to sit and debate. Annual magistrates were elected as before, but final decisions on matters of policy, warfare, diplomacy and appointments were privileged to the princeps as "first among equals" later to be known as imperator due to the holding of imperium, from which the term emperor is derived. His powers were monarchic in all but name, and he held them for his lifetime, on behalf of the Senate and people of Rome.

The Roman Republic was never restored, but neither was it abolished, so the exact date of the transition to the Roman Empire is a matter of interpretation. Historians have variously proposed the appointment of Julius Caesar as perpetual dictator in 44 BC, the defeat of Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, and the Roman Senate's grant of extraordinary powers to Octavian under the first settlement and his adopting the title Augustus in 27 BC, as the defining event ending the Republic.

Many of Rome's legal and legislative structures can still be observed throughout Europe and much of the world in modern nation states and international organizations. Latin, the language of the Romans, has influenced language across parts of Europe and the world.