page_title: Liberty (personification)
section_title: Ancient Rome
hierarchical_section_title: Liberty (personification) / Ancient Rome
caption_attribution_description: English: Trebonianus Gallus. AD 251-253. AR Antoninianus (21mm, 3.60 g, 12h). Mediolanum (Milan) mint. Struck AD 251-253. IMP C. C. VIB. TREB. GALLVS AUG. Radiate, draped, and cuirassed bust right; LIBERTAS PUBLICA, Libertas standing left, holding pileus and transverse scepter. RIC IV 70; RSC 68.
context_page_description: The concept of liberty has frequently been represented by personifications, often loosely shown as a female classical goddess. Examples include Marianne, the national personification of the French Republic and its values of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, the female Liberty portrayed on United States coins for well over a century, and many others. These descend from images on ancient Roman coins of the Roman goddess Libertas and from various developments from the Renaissance onwards. The Dutch Maiden was among the first, re-introducing the cap of liberty on a liberty pole featured in many types of image, though not using the Phrygian cap style that became conventional. The 1886 Statue of Liberty by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi is a well-known example in art, a gift from France to the United States.
context_section_description: The ancient Roman goddess Libertas was honored during the second Punic War (218 to 201 BC) by a temple erected on the Aventine Hill in Rome by the father of Tiberius Gracchus.  In a highly political gesture, a temple for her was raised in 58 BC by Publius Clodius Pulcher on the site of Marcus Tullius Cicero's house after it had been razed.  When depicted as a standing figure, on the reverse of coins, she usually holds out, but never wears, a pileus, the soft cap that symbolised the granting of freedom to former slaves.  She also carries a rod, which formed part of the ceremony for manumission.  In the 18th century, due to antiquarians misunderstanding the shape, the pileus turned into the similar Phrygian cap carried on a pole by English-speaking "Liberty" figures, and then worn by Marianne and other 19th-century personifications, as the "cap of liberty".
  Libertas had been important under the Roman Republic, and was somewhat uncomfortably co-opted by the empire; it was not seen as an innate right, but as granted to some under Roman law.  Her attribute of the pileus had appeared on the coins of the assassins of Julius Caesar, defenders of the Roman republic, between two daggers with the inscription "EID MAR" (the Ides of March).
caption: Coin of Trebonianus Gallus (coincidentally with a radiant crown) and "Libertas Publica" holding out a pileus, and carrying her rod. AD 251–253
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