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Nicomedia AE20 RecGen 317 of Severus Alexander

Severus Alexander AE20 of Nicomedia, Bithynia. M AVP CEV ALEXANDROC AVG, radiate bust right / NIKOMHDEWN DIC NEWKORWN, Leda, half naked, standing right offering some fruits to a swan to right, beating its wings.

Lot No.2880. gFine under a rough patina, with a rarely seen mythological scene.

$ 495.

Jupiter has changed himself into a swan, in order to avoid being detected by Hera, his wife, during a romantic interlude with Leda, a beautiful nymph. The result of this union was Helen of Troy, who was the cause of the Trojan War, as well as Castor and Pollus.

This scene has captured the imagination of artists for thousands of years.

Marble sculpture in Florence:

Painting by Rubens:

W. B. Yeats's famous poem:

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Severus Alexander was a serious minded emperor who was quite a relief for the empire after his cousin, Elagabalus, was removed in 222 AD. He served very respectably until 235 AD under the tutelege of his grandmother Julia Mamaea, until he was overthrown and killed by the forces of Maximinus Thrax.