The New Goddess Hera

CNG 90, Lot: 1021. Estimate $750. Sold for $4500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

CARIA, Alinda. Caracalla, with Plautilla. AD 198-217. Æ (36mm, 22.18 g, 6h). Marcus Ulpius Uliades, magistrate. Struck circa AD 202/3. AV K M A-NTΩNINOC N(εα) Θ(εα) H(ρα) ΠΛAVTIΛ, confronted busts of Caracalla right, laureate, draped, and cuirassed, and Plautilla left, draped and wearing stephane / Apollo standing facing, head left, holding plectrum and lyre. Karl 79 (coin with c/m; same dies); SNG München 55 (coin with c/m; same dies); SNG von Aulock 2412 (same dies); BMC 17 (rev. only illustrated). Good VF, brown patina that is lightly rubbed on the highpoints. Fine style portraits of the young newlyweds. Better than the above referenced specimens and lacking the usual countermark.

From Group CEM. Ex Numismatic Fine Arts XIV (29 November 1984), lot 493.

Three Carian cities - Alinda, Alabanda, and Stratonicea - commemorated the marriage between Caracalla and Plautilla by issuing coins with dual portraits proclaiming the young empress as “the new goddess Hera.” As Ken Harl notes (Civic Coins and Civic Politics in the Roman East: A.D. 180-275 [Berkeley, CA: University of California Press], p. 41): “By implication, Caracalla was envisioned as a youthful Zeus, so that the imperial marriage became a symbolic reenactment of the celestial one.”