To Be Wolves - Portraits
This article is for readers of my novel To Be Wolves, which is book two in The Vesta Shadows Trilogy, a series that follows the life of the Vestal Pomponia Occia through the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire under Augustus.
Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Augustus, Octavia and Livia. Jean-Baptiste Wicar, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Many of the personalities and events in my books are depicted on ancient Roman coins, so in this series of articles I’ve included relevant coins from my collection. But just FYI - there may be SPOILERS ahead, so you may wish to finish reading the book before the article. *Also, if you’re following the trilogy, you may also want to read the article for Brides of Rome (book one) before this one, and the article for Empire of Iron (book three) after this one.
There are only a couple coins I want to show you here, and they’re both portrait coins. As you probably know, the emperor Augustus has a very long and very interesting marriage to Livia Drusilla, who is a wonderful character and a fascinating historical personality. This long marriage makes the below coin, at least to my way of thinking, a meaningful one, as it shows both the emperor and the empress on the obverse.
Here we have the jugate heads of Augustus and Livia on the front of a Greek coin from Ionia. The emperor is wearing a crown of laurels and the empress is in the background (the arrow for Livia is pointing to her hair; I’ve also put a dotted line between their faces).
It’s nice to see the couple like this, and the reverse of the coin emphasizes their loving relationship—it’s an image of Aphrodite (the Greek equivalent of Venus), as seen below.
The second coin I want to show you, below, is one of Augustus and his general Agrippa.
On this dupondius, we can see Agrippa facing left and Augustus facing right. Above, we can see the letters IMP for Imperator, or Emperor, and below, we can just make out DIVI F (divi filius) which is Octavian referring to himself as the son of the divine or deified Julius Caesar.
There is a scene in the novel To Be Wolves where Pomponia and Octavian are talking about Agrippa, and she mentions how the emperor and his general are seen on coins together, basically alluding to the latter’s status. This is the coin I had in mind when I wrote that scene, as I felt it was a good way to demonstrate how powerful Agrippa had become in Rome.
To me, this is an emotional coin, too, since this was struck closer to the end of Augustus’s life—around 10 to 14 CE. In fact, I think both of these portrait coins are emotional and meaningful, as they show the emperor alongside the two people who certainly seem to have been the most important to him in his entire life. These were people that were certainly central to the life of Pomponia as well.
Thank you for reading. And again, if you’re following the trilogy The Vesta Shadows, you may wish to continue to the article for Empire of Iron (book three).