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Power of Beast: The Capitoline Wolf as an Element in the Construction of Roman Identity
Abstract
One of the important hashtags of the modern perception of the history of Ancient Rome is the Capitoline Wolf. The article develops the issue of the iconography of the plot about the miraculous rescue of Romulus and Remus based on the analysis of numismatic sources. Since coins are a complex source, it has been established that the magistrates of the Greek cities of the eastern provinces of the Roman state placed the Capitoline Wolf and twins on exchange coins. If it was a question of minting in veteran colonies, then the legend on such coins provides us with the name of the settlement. It is also important that in the semi-autonomous minting of cities, local elites combined the Capitoline Wolf with the figures of local deities, the personification of the demos or important local socio-political phenomena. Thus, this image became an important part of the identity of the population of the 2nd–3rd centuries AD. Such coins were not issued for decades, but given that most cities minted coins for a very short time, the presence of coins with a Lupa Capitolina among the issues is important. It is interesting that it was during this period that very archaic myths were revived in coinage.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/rh.2025.59.281-300
Date of publication: 2025-10-31 08:36:08
Date of submission: 2025-01-12 20:34:58
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