Didrachm (Coin) Depicting the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux) (225-214 BCE, issued by the Roman Republic): Artwork and History

Didrachm (Coin) Depicting the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux) (225-214 BCE, issued by the Roman Republic) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Roman, possibly minted in Rome.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

The front of this coin depicts a Janiform head of the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux), wearing crowns of laurels and surrounded by a decorative border of dots. On the back the god Jupiter wields a thunderbolt while riding in a four horse chariot, called a quadriga, which is driven by the figure of Victory. Beneath them, ROMA is inscribed in a rectangle.

Object facts

• Title: Didrachm (Coin) Depicting the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux)
• Date: 225-214 BCE, issued by the Roman Republic
• Artist attribution: Roman, possibly minted in Rome
• Place of origin: Capua
• Medium: Silver
• Dimensions: Diam.: 2.3 cm (15/16 in.)
• Type: Coin
• Department: Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium
• Reference number: 1923.1241

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. William Nelson Pelouze

View the original

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.