A random web search: Goddesses with a scale

[No Elephants]

We associate with scales Justia, Roman goddess of Justice, and Minerva, Roman goddess of wisdom, war, arts and crafts, schools, medicine and commerce. (Minerva was born from the godhead of Jupiter with weapons.) Minerva came down to the Romans from the Etruscans


First, I note as an aside that it is odd that Romans assigned goddesses to these things, that were carried out almost exclusively by men.

Passing that, we (I, anyway) have tended to assume that the scales represent lofty and pure ideals.

However, that is not necessarily what they represented to the Romans who associated the scale with those two goddesses.

The small, hand-held balance scales used by bankers and moneychangers became a potent symbol on Roman coins. In the modern world we are familiar with this type of scales as a legal symbol, usually carried by a female personfication of Justice. In Rome, however, the symbolic value of these scales always retained a practical association with money and commerce. From the mid-first century CE emperors began minting coins with the goddess Aequitas, often identified as a quality of the emperor, AEQVITAS AVG or AVGVSTI. Aequitas means essentially “evenness, flatness, symmetry,” for which a balance scale provides an excellent visual representation; the emperors apparently used this personified goddess to emphasize their guarantee of fairness and equity with regard to the entire Roman monetary system. The goddess is usually shown also holding a cornucopia, which indicates the abundance and wealth produced by an economy in which the weights of coins are reliable and the merchants employ honestly balanced scales.

It is not surprising that Vespasian frequently used this symbolism on his coins, to emphasize his restoration of balance in the Roman economy after the upheavals caused by the excesses of Nero and the civil wars that followed his death. This double-struck denarius was issued in 70 CE:.....

http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/aequitas.html


Interesting that Justice, war, etc. were all associcated with money in Rome (as were many of the gods and goddesses, whose images, as imagined by the Romans, appeared on Roman coins, along with the emperors, some of whom were supposed to be gods. (Secular power, deity and money all came together as well.)

So, it's nothing new. I don't know whether that is comforting or depressing, but I found it interesting.

[Enthusiast]

1. Fascinating, No Elephants.

Yeah, I don't know whether it is comforting or depressing. Cool sort of coins anyway.

[No Elephants]

3. Which makes you feel better, the bad news or the good news?

1. The bad news is that things were never that great to begin with.

2. The good news is that things haven't actually gotten as "worser" as some of us may have thought they had.


The end times religious folk who specialize in interpreting for us the prophesies of the biblical Book of Revelations about what the world will be like before Jesus returns say that the U.S. is actually Roman Empire to which the book of Revelations refers. Maybe they are right?

I believe we are coming close to the one world leader, another prophesy in Revelation. And, in the U.S. anyway, we are pretty much our Social Security numbers. We may not need them if we pay in cash, but I have to give at least the last four numbers even if to ask my cable company if service in my neighborhood has been disrupted.

Revelation 13:17 King James Version (KJV)

17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Whole chapter: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%2013&version=KJV

[No Elephants]

2. P.S. The Roman deity of liberty.

Liber, the male deity, was a bit of a boozer and, well, a libertine. Interestingly, his day, Liberalia, was March 17, the same as St. Patrick's Day, which, for some reason, devolved into a day of drinking and drunkeness.

In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Liber ("the free one"), also known as Liber Pater ("the free Father") was a god of viticulture and wine, fertility and freedom. He was a patron deity of Rome's plebeians and was part of their Aventine Triad. His festival of Liberalia (March 17) became associated with free speech and the rights attached to coming of age. His cult and functions were increasingly associated with Bacchus and his Greek equivalent Dionysus, whose mythologies he came to share.<1>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber


The early "goddiness" of Roman female deity, Libertas, is marred by a spite fight over real estate, specifically the home of Cicero, the Roman orator/philosoper/politician.

Libertas had been a deity, which is less than a goddess or god. Then, a plebian tribune introduced a law that made illegal--and cause for execution--something that Cicero had done four years earlier, i.e., an law. Specifically, Cicero, as a government official, had executed several people without a trial. Cicero argued that his official post protected him, but he lost this argument. So, Cicero went into exile, rather than be executed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero

(We can detect in Cicero's story, as wiki tells it, the beginnings of some provisions of the bill of rights and other Constitutional provisions, as well as the law of sovereign immunity, and maybe even the Framers' distate for and fear of democracy, but all that is another story for another post.)

Anyway, Libertas had recently risen to the status of a goddess. So, after Cicero went into exile, Tiberius Gracchus ordered that a temple of Libertas be erected, which it was.

Then, the same plebian tribune who had announced the ex post facto law that had led Cicero to exile himself, built a second temple to Libertas on the site of Cicero's home. That made it illegal for anyone (including Cicero) to live there.

Cicero did. however, return and argue successfully for the return of his home and land.

And Libertas is the inspiration for Columbia, who appears on some coins, Lady Liberty, and the statute of Liberty.

ETA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertas

[Enthusiast]

4. Thanks for the interesting history. I guess we don't want a democracy,

but a democratic constitutional republic. One where we have elected representation. Problem is, or has become, the overwhelming influence of corporate money.