Antoninus Pius Rare Æ Sestertius Commemorative Issue 9000th Anniversary of Rome Sow Piglets Lares Roman Empire 143 AD Bronze Coin Museum Reproduction CBRS0098

A rare and historically important scene is depicted on this reverse, struck to commemorate the 900th year of Rome. According to Virgil, Aeneas, sailing up the Tiber, came across a giant white sow nursing twenty piglets under the shade of an ancient oak tree. Seeing this as a sign from the gods, he founded the city of Lanuvium, Rome’s precursor, on the site.

Lares Grundules: the thirty grunting Lares , supposedly given an altar and cult by Romulus or Aeneas when a sow produced a prodigous farrow of thirty piglets. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus the place where the sow bore the piglets and Aeneas made the sacrifice was sacred, and forbidden to foreigners. The sow’s body was said to be kept at Lavinium, preserved in salt brine as a sacred object. The thirty piglets would provide the theological justification for the thirty populi Albenses of the feriae Latinae (the thirty fortified boroughs supposedly founded by Aeneas at Lavinium), and the thirty curiae of Rome.
DESIGN:
Obverse side
Laureate head of Antoninus right
Legend:
ANTONINVS AVG PIVS P P TR P COS III

Reverse side
Sow, standing right beneath tree, suckling piglets
Legend:
S-C in ex

A perfect choice for Numismatists, Historians, Military Veterans, Collectors.