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Denarius Marcia: Lucius Marcius Censorinus, L•CENSOR

Issuer Roman Republic (509 BC - 27 BC)
Year 82 BC
Type Standard circulation coin
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Obverse description Bare laureate head of Apollo facing right, rendered in fine Republican style with flowing locks beneath the wreath. The field is anepigraphic, though certain specimens bear a control symbol in the left or right field depending on the variety. The portrait displays the characteristic idealized Hellenistic treatment common to late Republican coinage of the gens Marcia.
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Reverse description The satyr Marsyas depicted standing left in full figure, his right arm raised aloft and a wineskin draped over his left shoulder, referencing the legendary musical contest with Apollo. To the right stands a tall column surmounted by a statue of Minerva, an allusion to the columna Maenia in the Roman Forum and the moneyer's ancestral claim to civic virtue. The moneyer's mark L•CENSOR is inscribed downward in the left field; certain specimens additionally carry a control letter or numeral in the right field.
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Additional information

Lucius Marcius Censorinus held the office of moneyer around 82 BC, during the final, bloody phase of the conflict between Sulla and the Marian faction. The gens Marcia claimed descent from Ancus Marcius, the fourth king of Rome — a lineage ostentatiously advertised on coinage of this period as part of the aristocratic propaganda that characterized late Republican moneyer issues.

RRC 363/1 is well documented with no significant die variety controversies. The cognomen CENSOR on this issue references an ancestor who held the censorship, not the moneyer himself.

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