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XXI
SCROFA, a surname used by the Romans. Scrofa.-- The figure of a sow, with or without a litter of pigs, appears on several Roman coins, as well imperial as consular. Among other instances, on a denarius of the moneyer Veturia, there is a sow, which a man on his knees holds between two soldiers, one of whom carries a spear upright, the other a spear reversed, and each touches the sow with a stick or with their daggers. (See Veturia.) -- This is considered by some allusive to the treaty of peace between Romulus and Tatius. -- Another silver moneyers coin (amongst the Incerta of Morell) represents eight men standing, four on one side and four on the other of the kneeling figure, and each touches the sow with his short stick or dagger. On a coin of the moneyer Sulpicia are seen standing two military figures, armed with spears, who point with the right hand to a sow lying on the ground between them. (See Sulpicia.) -- This curious reverse, and others similar to it, have given rise to various opinions amongst the learned. Eckhel, after stating all, gives his in favour of the view taken by Ericius, namely, that the figures personify the Dei Penates of Lavinium, and that the animal represents the sow, with its thirty pigs, which was the cause, according to the Roman legend, of Æneas building in a certain spot the city of Lavinium. (See Æneas.) -- On a silver coin of Vespasian, accompanying the abbreviated inscription IMP. XIX. is the figure of a sow and pigs, doubtless referring to the same portentous mother and brood of thirty which were seen by Æneas, and to which Virgil adverts at the beginning of the eight book of his immortal poem, in the words addressed in the dream by "Father Tiber" to the Trojan chief. This favourite incident of Roman tradition, in the way of marvellous augury, is graphically shadowed forth on two finely designed and boldly relieved medallions in bronze of Antoninus Pius, both without epigraph. The former of these represents Æneas disembarking by a plank from a ship on the shore of Latium, where, holding his son Ascanius by the hand, he contemplates a sow suckling its little ones under an oak tree, above which appear the walls of a city. The latter exhibits the fortified gate of a city, above which stands a sow with her young : behind is Æneas carrying Anchises, an altar lighted, and a round temple. The town, which is depicted on the last-mentioned coin, is Lavinium, according to Eckhel, who has more fully explained the subject in his annotations on the denarii of Sulpicius rufus. -- See Sulpicius. Kolb in his Traité de Numismatique Ancienne, gives (pl. vii. fig. 13) a second brass of Antoninus, with a sow and litter under a tree, evidently in allusion to the same fable. View whole page from the Dictionary Of Roman Coins |