Nomos 14

P. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus, 50 BC. Denarius (Silver, 18mm, 3.84 g 5), Rome. MARCELLINVS Bare head to right of M. Claudius Marcellus (consul in 222 BC); behind, triskeles. Rev. MARCELLVS COS.QVINQ M. Claudius Marcelllus, togate and wearing wreath, walking right, carrying Gallic trophy into the tetrastyle temple of Jupiter Feretrius. Babelon (Cornelia) 69. Bauten 96. Crawford 439/1. Hill 34. Sydenham 1147. A very attractive, beautifully toned coin struck in high relief. Some minor flatness, otherwise, about extremely fine.

From the Stoecklin Collection.

This coin bears a portrait of one of the great Roman heros of the second Punic War, M. Claudius Marcellus, the general who conquered Syracuse in 211 (thus the triskeles, symbol of Sicily, on the obverse). As the reverse legend tells us, he was consul five times. In 222, during his first consulate, he defeated the Celtic Insubres under their king Britomartis; the reverse of this coin shows him bringing a trophy from that victory into the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, traditionally the first temple to have been built in Rome. The portrait itself could well go back to an image made in the general’s lifetime; or, perhaps, to that on the statue erected in his honor in the first half of the 2nd century BC.