LOT 0189 Roman Danubian Votive Plaque Collection
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3rd century AD. A group of four lead votive trapezoidal and round plaques showing scenes associated with the Danubian cult: on three plaques the god Sol and the goddess Luna are depicted in profile on the right and the left side of the upper part of the section, while on one trapezoidal plaque their busts are facing, the sun (Helios) crowned by the star diadem, the moon (Selene) by the half moon; at the centre of all plaques facing Helen of Sparta, the divine daughter of Leda and Zeus, welcoming her divine brothers, the twins Castor and Pollux, both personifying the Danubian rider on horseback; on all plaques both the riders advancing, their cloaks flying back, and the legs of their horses overwhelm the sacrificial victims; on the lower part of the plaques, the cock, the sacred animal of the sun represented on two plaques, tripods, foliage and animal symbols representing the offerings to the gods; on the background of all plaques Cult architectural elements. See Tudor, D., Corpus Monumentorum Religionis Equitum Danuviorum, 2 vols, Leiden, 1969-1976; Rinaldi Tufi, S., 'I cavalieri danubiani e i loro misteri', in I Daci, Catalogue of the exhibition, Milan 1997, pp.90-91.381 grams total, 72-89mm (2 3/4 - 3 1/2"). Property of an East Anglian collector; formerly acquired on the European art market in the 1990s. The plaques contain a complex iconography of divine figures and symbols, probably to be associated with Thracian or Dacian beliefs of the Lower Danube region, but also with the Greek myth of the divine twins Castor and Pollux (the Dioskuroi), an important element of the Roman religion since the origins, now mixed with the cult of the Danubian rider. Presiding over the whole scene is usually the Sol Invictus (the unconquered sun-god) and his sister the Moon (Selene"). His cult originated in the Near East and gained increasing influence under imperial patronage during the third century AD. The state worship of Sol (Greek Helios) was slowly substituted by Constantine's favour towards Christianity since AD 312. A corpus of 232 known reliefs representing the Danubian horseman has been published by Tudor: most of them were found in Dacia, Moesia and Pannonia. [4]
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