NERVA (96-98). Denarius. Rome.
Obv: IMP CAES AVG PONT MAX TR P.
Laureate head right.
Rev: COS II DESIGN III P P.
Diana standing facing, holding bow and drawing arrow from quiver; at feet, hound right.
RIC 11.
Condition: Good very fine.
Weight: 2.90 g.
Diameter: 19 mm.
Ex Rauch, Marius Heemstra collection
The identity of the founder of the Temple of Diana Planciana in Rome has been a subject of ongoing speculation for centuries. On account of a senatorial family’s eponym in the temple’s name, it is generally assumed to have been built in the late Republic or early in the reign of Augustus by either Cn. Plancius orL. Munatius Plancus. M. Plancius Varus of Perge, whose family was devoted to the worship of Artemis/Diana and who was a prominent senator under Nero and Vespasian, is another possibility, for the epigraphic attestations of the temple cannot be securely dated before the early second century CE. I propose another candidate as the founder, Cornutus Tertullus, who was probably a Plancius through adoption and whose career Nerva actively promoted alongside Pliny’s. Cornutus Tertullus was also married to Plancia Magna, priestess of Artemis at Perge. Nerva styled himself as an inheritor of the Augustan legacy and as espousing republican values, which would have allowed senatorial initiative in the construction of a temple. Attribution of the temple, or perhaps a reconstruction of it, to Cornutus Tertullus also explains the unusual interest in Diana on the coinage of Nerva.