Description
Rome, 79 BC. AR denarius, 3.94 gr., 18 mm.
Obv.: head of Juno Sospita to the right, wearing goat-skin headdress; behind: thyrsos.
Rev.: L•PAPI; griffin leaping to the right; below: kopis.
Ref.: Crawford 384/1; Sydenham 773; Babelon, Papia 1.
Beautifully toned. Some find-deposits. Extremely fine.
There are at least 232 control varieties on the denarii of L. Papius. Sydenham (Symbols on Denarii of L. Papius and L. Roscius, in: NC 1931, pp. 1-13) has argued that the symbols represented trade guilds, but Crawford felt that they were simply a ‘random selection of pairs of everyday objects’.
