Liv Mariah Yarrow

This is BM 1867,0101.1099.

I believe Pobjoy’s write up on this coin and most of the social war coins. 

The BM catalogue calls the scepter tied with a fillet the mast.  This is just wrong.  That is not what masts on ships on coins or gems look like.

addendum, later same day: This is the same description given in HN Italy 416–mast and sail–still wrong, but at least I know where BM is getting it, must check but probably also in Campana…

Filleted Scepter is clearly right reading BUT this is problematic to me because of it being iconographically unprecedented until later.  That scepter tied with a fillet is a hallmark of the famous fleet coinage of Antony and also appears on the coins of Sextus Pompeius.

Also the hand shake with the prow in the background is an iconography of the civil war period (RRC 469, 470/1a).

Now all these parallels could have a common Hellenistic precursor, but if they do, I don’t know what it is (and that bothers me).  I think it unlikely the later Roman Civil War types would copy Social War types.

It just makes me a little worried about the issue and its legitimacy, but there are a number of specimens which a good deal of variation…..

 

So I assume along with the great and the good that the Mars Eagle types was introduced to support the introduction of denarius and thus it dates to 211 BCE and after.  Right? right. 

Ok.  Fine. But doesn’t it seem likely that the Roman eagle inspired the eagle on the Capua As (HN Italy 503, BM 1937,0606.19 illustrated below) and Didrachm (HN Italy 480):

I know I know.  Iconography is a terrible way to date coins but it does strike me as a little funny.

Frugi’s coin is clearly a patera and part of the priestly implements (RRC 418):

Now lets look at an under appreciated coin from much earlier RRC 271

Same rendering.  Same object.  EVEN the same type of wreath!  We now much put Cavedoni‘s idea that it might be connected to the lex Acilia back on the table which Crawford threw out.  (I find myself relieved that he also makes the Piso Frugi parallel!)

Crawford, Paestum 16/1, HN Italy 1223

Clearly based on RRC 264 (or 369, its restoration!) and RRC 265 (or 371, its restoration!)

Livy slips into the timeless ethnographic present to explain to his readers how Gallic (Celtic) bodies, barbarian bodies aren’t like their own…

38.21