Pietas popularis? Riflessi di ideologia graccano-popolare nei tipi monetali di M. Herennius (RRC 308)

Abstract

Around the year 108 B.C., the triumvir monetalis M. Herennius issued denarii which bore the portrait of Pietas on the obverse and one of the Catanean brothers carrying his parent on the reverse. This article aims to demonstrate that previous interpretations of these types as narrow allusions to the history of the gens are fallacious. Accordingly, new arguments are provided in order to give value to the political-ideological context of the last decades of the II century B.C.: in these years, pietas emerged alongside libertas as a fundamental value of the popularis ideological construct. This tradition was inspired by the oratorical and literary self-representation of Gaius Gracchus, that made his pietas erga fratrem and the pious portrayal of the family an important pillar of his legitimiz ing agenda. The political heirs of the Gracchi, such as C. Memmius and L. Apuleius Saturninus, continued to claim vengeance for the killed brothers and to blame the behaviour of the optimates – so that pietas remained a profitable slogan of the popularis political tradition. In this respect, Aetna’s eruptions in the Gracchan period and their explanation as prodigia formed an ideal humus for actualising the type of the Catanean brothers as catalyzing reference to the pietas popularis.