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Julia C

Looking for a coin of Julia

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It's very unfortunate that my namesake has the dubious distinction of having most of her portraiture and coins destroyed. I've consequently had terrible luck finding any good coins of Julia at any of the various coin dealers I've found online, including Ebay.

 

I've only found two, really--one of them has a decent price (around 400 dollars) but the quality is so bad that you can barely make out Julia at all. The other one I've found is of fair quality, but it's near six thousand dollars, and I can't quite justify that.

 

I was wondering if anybody here has one available or knows where to find one.

 

Thank you. :)

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[quote name='Julia C

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I actually manage to find one denarius that depict Augustus and Julia.

 

They are probably a bigger chance to find a coin of Julia minted by provincial authorities (like this one) as they had no reservations about minting the image of a woman and Julia did visit the east with Agrippa.

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Ingsog: I don't have any problem buying provincial coins--in fact, they're probably a lot easier to find, like you said. I just want something depicting her in my possession, but coins are hard to come by and busts (reproduction or otherwise) are nonexistant.

 

I do occasionally find a few coins online resembling both: Augustus w/Julia as Diana, or the Livia/Julia pair but they've always been sold already. I wouldn't even care if the coin was fake so long as it had a likeness of Julia on it!

 

The 400 dollar one I mentioned earlier is gone, although the 6000 dollar one is still around--and is actually on CNG, in fact.

 

The Augusta: I think they may have both been provincial coins, and she was on the reverse of both of them. There's no way she'd be on the obverse, agreed--I just want something with her on it.

 

Do you know, by chance, which bust it was that was misidentified as Julia?

 

I'm not even sute if the one in my icon is a legitimate likeness or not. ;)

Edited by Julia C

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Oh, really? That's surprising, she looks so Claudian!

 

I read about a head recently unearthed in Corinth that has been identified as Julia by a wide array of scholars, including some who have refused positive IDs on everything except the single Roman denarius with Gaius/Julia/Lucius on the reverse. It's interesting because that piece strongly resembles an older version of the one used in my icon, which is a relief to me since I've only ever seen this piece discussed on the internet and not in any scholarly work.

 

It's in the Pergamon in Berlin, and I keep trying to find helpful Germans to take pictures of it from different angles but no dice.

 

EDIT: There's also apparently a sword sheath in Bonn that has her between Gaius and Lucius--I can't find a picture of that anywhere!

Edited by Julia C

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Well, it looks a lot like this one--and this one seems to be the most modern "definitive" Julia so far: juliacorinthig2.png

 

The eyes and nose in particular are very, very similar. And there is a trace of Augustus in there, but you're right in that it doesn't look as much like him as say, portraits of Octavia.

 

But yes, it's nice to be back. I'm always so busy so it's hard to keep track of this place sometimes.

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