Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Sestertius of Nero, showing the Temple of Janus Quirinus
Not on view
This Roman coin depicts the Temple of Janus Quirinus, a building destroyed long before the Renaissance. A representation of the coin appears in a late sixteenth-century book of commentary, illustrating a specific passage in Suetonius’s biography of Augustus. In those lines, Suetonius recounts how Augustus closed the temple’s door—a gesture symbolizing the achievement of peace. This action is illustrated in the third scene on the Augustus dish, where the emperor closes the door to a temple clearly modeled after the image on the coin.
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