Francesco Carotta: Aurora sul denario di L. Aemilius Buca (RRC 480/1) coniato dopo la morte di * Cesare

Francesco Carotta argues that the denarius of L. Aemilius Buca (RRC 480/1), struck after Julius Caesar’s assassination, depicts not Sulla’s dream or simply Selene visiting Endymion, but Caesar himself as Memnon-Endymion being granted immortality. The coin shows a reclining male figure, Selene, and a winged female figure. Earlier scholars debated whether the scene represented Sulla’s dream or the myth of Endymion and Selene; Carotta accepts the Endymion interpretation but identifies the winged figure as Eos/Aurora, not Victoria or Aura. Her torch and the drops beneath her hand are, he argues, the torch of Phosphorus/Lucifer and tears or dew shed by Aurora for her slain son Memnon—symbols of resurrection and immortality. Thus, Caesar is portrayed as a new Memnon: a Trojan-descended hero who died before an eastern campaign and was murdered by traitors, paralleling Memnon’s death. Venus on the reverse reinforces Caesar’s apotheosis, since Aurora carried Memnon to the stars just as Venus carried Caesar, whose soul Romans later saw in the comet. Carotta further proposes that the Tusculum portrait of Caesar belonged to a funerary sculptural group based on this image. Viewed in the reclining posture shown on the coin, its apparent anatomical “anomalies” become deliberate artistic features. He concludes that the portrait was a sacred funerary image, perhaps connected with Fulvia and Caesar’s funeral rites, representing Caesar as the immortal, resurrected Memnon-Endymion. carotta.de