Mostly in their mother or carer’s arms, but if not there where?!

BM

BM

BM

At this point I stopped looking for images because I had to write an epic thread on 19th century provenance.

Image research is impossible on a writing day. It slows everything down.

BM 1849,0623.3. “Curator’s comments: Etruscan style. Furtwaengler identifies the owner of the gem, Annia Augusta, with the widow of a distinguished Roman of the Republican period.” “Description: Banded onyx elongated scarab engraved with a draped bearded priest holding out a sacrificial vessel with a chain attached; in front is an altar with a situla (?) on top and a branch beside it. There is an inscription.”

The BM dates 3rd century BCE. I can find no scholarly publication using Google Scholar. It is not in Epigraphic Database Clauss-Slaby (EDCS).

The inscription is clearly Greek not Latin, but the gens is Latin.

CEBACTH or sebaste for Augusta is very imperial but the gem looks v 3rd century CE.

The impression doesn’t show the liquid falling from the cup that is visible on the gem.

I don’t know what to make of it.

Do you know a publication? Please share.

BM 1799,0521.70

Sard gem engraved with ritual instruments: oinochoe, knife (culter?), lituus, patera, and hooked staff (pedum); inscribed AV.

I don’t think the knife is sacrificial as the pedum which it parallels is not.

Antikenmuseum, Basel, Schweiz, Slg. Ludwig. Inv.-Nr. 261

The panel on the right with the wax tablets and the money bag is the perfect representation to go with some of my future talks hence it gets dropped in here. The plow and team of oxen and reel and distaff are also pretty awesome symbols of encoded Roman virtues. Gotta go back to another task but don’t want to lose this accidental find.

How familiar were the Romans with this god in the Roman republic? I’ve come up empty handed and gotten stuck on the question.

First who is he? Mostly associated with the East and popular with Soldiers. Likes to stand around on the back of bulls. Fond of double headed axes. Associated with storms. Mostly discussed as a mystery cult god of the high empire, like the better known Mithras or Isis. You know the drill, foreign, exotic, but not TOO foreign. Wikipedia entry.

The symbols of this gem are identical to those of Papius RRC 384/1 no. 13.

Augustan Age is easier to establish via literature. Harrison’s 1991 commentary on Vergil Book 10 doesn’t discuss the god (yes, I’m disappointed), but I believe the allusion is there:

The intent seems certainly to invoke an eastern god as the origin of an eastern hero, BUT this is not a traditional reading.

Epigraphic evidence suggests Dolichenus was associated with Jupiter Optimus Maximus before 50 CE, perhaps as early as Augustus’ reign.

Both from Trieste (EDCS-13700414 and EDCS-04600005). I wonder if the cognomen Heorte may suggest an eastern origin of this woman.

In the mid first century CE on the northern frontier two women give thanks for their freedom to I.O.M.D (EDCS-14500089). The name Dolichenus is restored and likely correct suggesting the god is so well known there is no need to spell out the name.

The earliest inscription in Rome itself of this syncretism is firmly dated to 92 BCE. (EDCS-29200149). There is no doubt about the syncretism possible with the names spelled out in full:

Iovi Optimo Maximo
Dolicheno

There is no reference to Dolichenus in Pompeii that I can find. BUT! There is the famous hand of Sabazius.

More images below.

I mention this as Sabazius stands on a bull head and both cults use similar bronze hands.

From Berndt Ersöz 2018:

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The idea that these cults may have travelled back to Rome with soldier in the first century BCE is intriguing but unproved.

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Other hands. I’ve taken these off pinterest as that is where I found the most images. I’ve not check for authenticity or source or findspot–use with caution

said to be in the National Aquatic Archaeological museum, Cartagena (Qart Hadasht – Carthago Nova)

Scroll down for workflow content.

Today I accepted the official offer to serve next summer (their winter!) as a Senior Fellow at the Australian Centre for Ancient Numismatic Studies at MacQuarie University in Sydney, Australia. This will be for at least four weeks, precise dates to be announced. I am over the moon to be able to collaborate with all my Australian colleagues in real time without anyone sacrificing sleep for the zoom. It has been a life long dream to visit Australia in a fully immersive fashion.

I realize I’ve not yet announced my Visiting Professorship at the Institute of Advanced Study at the University of Warwick for “Spring”, 17 January – 17 March. (The pedant in me will point out the Spring equinox is after my return stateside.) This has been announced, but I owe them a head shot. The Warwick numismatic community is an inspiration so I hope to dream BIG and learn more about strategies integrating our discipline more fully into the study of the Ancient Mediterranean more broadly in terms of both curriculum and scholarship.

Headshots are so hard. I may need to phone a friend. I’m resolved to not use outdated photos as I age. If I don’t still wear the same glasses, the photo is too old.

This is part of my commitment to authenticity in myself presentation. There are too many pressures on young scholars and I remember all too well the haters on Mary Beard in her early days as a ‘media don’. To honor her trail blazing I want to keep my professional look authentically me, now. As I said to a young scholar in Beijing, a smart masters student at Capital Normal: one of the greatest joys as a woman is maturing and leaving behind the pressures to conform to societal expectations about femininity. The earlier we can make this internal transformation, the sooner we can embrace the gifts of our feminist foremothers.

The life of the mind and intellectual integrity exceeds any pleasure at being the object of esthetic admiration.

I do have photos of me from the last year I like but while they capture my joy and intensity, they aren’t quite the professional look of of a head shot. Definitely time to phone a photographer friend.

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Right done with the ‘go, me!’ content and on to the workflow stuff. This is about Claude helping me organize my own materials both offline and online, past scholarship, reference images, and more to let me easily review and rewrite my conclusions and check them about the great and good of yesteryear. It also lets me see patterns and changes in interpretation. I could augment this further to hold my reference images for comparanda to support my conclusions but as the goal is a print publication, I do not want to spend the time or energy. Perfect is the enemy of done. For other similar applications it would be totally worth it. This took very little time to set up. An hour or so of my work day yesterday. The best part is as I check each entry, I can add new features instantaneous to make my work flow easier. For instance in the time it took me to write a couple sentences it added a back button to let me easily move between records when I’m checking one set of control marks against another. The only website Claude accessed to build this my own livyarrow.org. Otherwise, everything was on my hard drive and/or in my Dropbox.

Yes, Claude extracted all the info from Crawford, Babelon, Grueber, Sydenham, Leuthold (not relevant here), and Fava from scans I gave it. Yes it suggests likely similarities from the two series based on my own past work and verb similarity. Crawford and others were constrained by the costs of print and just ignored earlier interpretations with which they disagreed in many cases. We don’t have to do the same. I can sure my interventions are transparent and preserve the chain of interpretation. This is one form of progress: allowing the next generation to critique our work and prefer what came before.

It automatically tells me where to find my notes. I work in the right hand column editing my past language, updating, scoring, my confidence. Finalizing the text.

It will eventually output a final printable format and easily let me play around with that format until it displays my ideas in ways I think best reflect my unique intellectual interventions. I chose to screen shot a place were I break with all previous interpretations. Quite often I find I’m just reverting (or rather re discovering) what Grueber already knew more than a 100 years ago. Frustrating but also fascinating.

Although it is more laborious, I do like making up my own mind first. It helps my confidence that I’m not just following sheep-like along the accepted path. Conclusions in the humanities should be as replicable as in the sciences.

Will I one day let you play with my interfaces? Will I be making more complex interfaces? Absolutely! But it will take time. I need to find appropriate hosting to provide such access. It will probably in the first instance require a log-in. I’m hopeful CUNY will support this work or I will find other partners.

The future is bright.

Here’s some comparative images to support my claims about Papius no. 13 (RRC 384/1).

Parts of a Steelyard Scale

I ran a scary (to me) experiment. I started my data dumping of Haeberlin and CRRO to looking at aes grave weights in 2019. I published my findings in 2023.

“The Strangeness of Heavy Bronze” In S. Bernard, L. Mignone, & D. Padilla Peralta (Eds.), Making the Middle Republic: New Approaches to Rome and Italy, c.400-200 BCE (pp. 103-131). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

I thought ahead of my Beijing talk at Peking University it would be interesting to ask Claude what it would do with the same data and interrogate my conclusions through this new tool for exploring data and creating data visualization.

As you’ll know from earlier posts that one of my concerns was the accuracy of Haeberlin’s numbers, hence I ran his numbers and CRRO separately. I then went to Berlin and convinced myself of Haeberlin’s incredible accuracy (post).

This is the visual Claude developed to communicate the incredible variation in weights. It lets us see at a glance less care being taking with smaller denominations and the overvaluing of the semuncia.

I then explored the question of whether RRC 18 is really meaningfully different in its weight standard RRC 14. It was this this heavier characteristic which led Thompsen to conclude RRC 18 must be after RRC 14, a seriation Crawford followed. No finds to date help us yet determine the actual sequence. They invariably appear together and are clearly earlier than the other aes grave.

I was worried I might have to issue a retraction… RRC 18 does look statistically meaningfully heavier.

BUT then I returned to the CRRO data and the picture I got was really interesting.

Haeberlin has more heavy asses of RRC 18 and thus if we prioritize his data the two series look far more different than if we prioritize the CRRO data.

In all these comparison the semuncia has been removed as it is only in one of the two earliest series BUT if we add it back in the two series start to look on aggregate more similar.

I wasn’t going to post any of this, at least not right away, but then I saw my own old notes about RRC 18 specimens being underfilled more than other series. (last post). And also that at Nemi RRC 18 tend to have innies where as RRC 14 tends to have outies. The manufacturing process was relatively new. The objects were made to trade at face value not weight (that’s the point of denominations!), but the workers were still working it out.

The differences are statistically significant, but are they historically significant? Here we cannot outsource our thinking or analysis. Based on the hoard data especially and the quick move by the Romans to cast the next series at a slightly lighter weight standard, I really don’t think there is any meaningful difference in weight standard between these two issues from the users point of view. The statistical difference does likely reflect either different times or different places of manufacture but these need not be drastically different.

The one thing I can say for sure is that that publication would have been way easier to prepare today.

So I collect more data than I can ever process. It is one of the reasons I blog as it leaves bread crumbs for future me and others with the same niche interests. While I was taking pXRF readings of specimens of aes grave I not only collected that data but also took detailed notes on what artifacts of manufacture I could observe on the specimens themselves. Those notes have been sitting in my files untouched and uncollated as I pushed forward on the metallurgy. I asked Claude to find the files. It did. I asked it to extract and integrate just the data I wanted to let me focus on the question. Perfect. Fascinating. I let it suggest some data visualization. Meh. Not very meaningful.

129 out 191 aes grave at Princeton, Yale, Rutgers, and Nottingham (Nemi) have two sprues.

This 2:1 ratio may suggest that aes grave were cast in chains of about 3 coins.

The pattern generally holds across the series, but RRC 21 and 27 might have experimented with longer chains. Obviously more data would make this more robust.

The following table helps us see the uncia was probably cast in longer chains.

Next Claude was genuinely helpful for seeing Yale and Rutgers were potentially skewing the data. My explanation for why is based on collecting habits. Quite often individuals and institutions want the BEST specimen they can afford. And best is often defined as without artifacts of the casting process or minimal artifacts. Hence a desire to acquire single sprue pieces. Thus chart is perhaps more accurate:

My notes are not as conclusive as I like but I am also reminded that in most cases the molds were filled from the top of the coin downwards, meaning the design on the molds seems to align with manufacturing, no surprise, but we do sometimes need to state the obvious.

To really publish these conclusions I’d probably have to go back to Berlin and sit with their collection and a few other large aes grave collections. It sounds at once very fun and also slightly wasteful for my time. I’d say I’d get a grad student to do it one day but would that really be a valuable thesis component? Or just sole crushing. I wish the data had been habitually recorded like die axes.

Interestingly my notes were also on whether the sprue(s) were innies and outies, there seemed no meaningful pattern here, except!!! Sometimes I would note that the mold seemed underfilled. Claude noticed and drew my attention to the fact that

Underfilling clusters in RRC 18 in every collection:

• Nemi: 5 of 16
• Princeton: 2 of 8
• Rutgers: 2 of 6
• all other series combined: 3 of 135 (p<0.0001)

So fascinating as RRC 18 is often thought of as the heaviest of the aes grave series.

Also Claude observed that at Nemi:

• RRC 14 sprues are mostly flat or outie (13 of 15).
• RRC 18 sprues lean towards innies.

I’m not sure these are meaningful observations but I do want to think more about them.

How accurate was I in my observations? Did I get careless at points? Did I over emphasize certain features? I’m more comfortable with trusting my reports of spue counts.

While we tend to imagine coin casting based on the surviving stones used to make tokens like this:

Thus I believe the chain casting would have looked more like this:

It is, of course, possible it might have looked like this Chinese casting layout and leave similar features on the coins themselves, but aes grave were so much bigger I think this more elaborate type of branching structure unlikely.

One day I’ll have a more plausible idea of the nature of the casting and manufacture, but we are some ways off being ready for experimental archaeology, but maybe by spring…

[This post is methodologically similar to this earlier piece on having Claude help me extract information from my own collection of data.]

Unfortunately after a decade plus of mistyping sprue as spue, one must search both to find past posts on this favorite topic.

All the of the images below have been shown in at least one public talk, most recently for colleagues at Peking University, so I feel it is high time I share them more broadly. All were drawn from my own data using Claude.

Surface readings do not give the original recipe but in aggregate they do provide a pattern.

This image shows the lack of distinction between issues. There are no meaningful color groupings.

This image shows that artifacts from a single find spot are more cohesive as we would expect. Those in other collections tend to have more copper I believe because of more intensive cleaning and even re-patination. Nevertheless I take comfort in the broad overlap. I showed a different visual of this overlap earlier on the blog, but I like this one better as it comes with measurements of difference.

I took readings of every bronze from Nemi in Nottingham. Multiple readings. Some of this I’m hoping back for publication but this one is interesting as it shows how different the struck coinage surfaces remain is even when in the same conditions of deposition for two millenia. I also shared this earlier on the blog but wanted it here to have the collection of data visualizations in one place.

The first delivery of this lecture was as U Illinois, Urbana Champaign. Today I am honored to deliver a version of it here in Beijing. I am not releasing slides and the speaking notes yet as I believe I may further refine my work on this subject for future delivery.

The Economic Historian and the Ciceronian Corpus

Abstract: This paper considers the challenges of using Cicero’s testimony as historical evidence for the nature of the Roman economy.  Emphasis is placed on the literary character of Cicero’s letters, comparative material evidence, and the Ciceronian passages most often cited by economic historians.  The corpus does provide a rich insight into elite Roman attitudes to economic issues and their moral dimensions.  While offering cautionary lessons, the speaker remains optimistic we may save the baby from the bathwater.

Don’t panic at the chunks of untranslated Latin!  This isn’t a sight-reading exam!  My slides are full of translations adapted from the Loeb unless otherwise noted (and pretty pictures).

1. Detail of woodcarving advertisement by Frank Van den Wijngaert 1926. Public domain image. 
2. Structure: I. Intro (a) how I got here; (b) a little (pragmatic) philosophy; (c) a wee bit of practical information on the nature of Roman money; II. substance (d) lex Valeria of 86BCE; (e) liquidity and ready cash; (f) temple deposits; (g) the fluctuation of interest rates; (g) where does this leave us?
3. Illustration from Th. Murner, Die Narrenbeschwörung (The Exorcism of Fools) 1512. Public domain image. 
4. F. Pina Polo, “Cupiditas pecuniae: wealth and power in Cicero.” In Money and power in the Roman republic, edited by H. Beck, M. Jehne and J. Serrati, 165-177. Latomus, 2016.  On slide: opening of Cic. St. Par. 6.42.  TikTok stills shown for non-commercial purposes under fair use laws. Otium and enslaved labor: R. Warwick, (2024). Cicero’s Lamp: Enslavement and the Light of Roman Authorship. American Journal of Philology, 145(4), 535–561; H. Flower, Intellectual Property: Learned Slaves and Educated Freedmen in Republican Rome. Princeton 2025; J. Coogan, C. Moss, and J. A. Howley, eds. Writing, Enslavement, and Power in the Roman Mediterranean, 100 BCE-300 CE. OUP 2025; S. Bernard, “Slavery, prosperity, and inequality in Roman Pompeii.” Past & Present 272.1 (2026): 3-50.
5. V. Tsouna, Philodemus, on property management. Society of Biblical Lit, 2013. On slide 27.44-46, my translation. Cicero on Philodemus: Pis. 68–72, 74 with Asconius ad 68; Fin. 2.119.  Press release images shown for non-commercial purposes under fair use laws.
6. Ibid. 26.39-43, Tsouna translation. Other passages mentioned: Use managers approved by friends: 26.18ff.  Don’t do your own manual labor, make money from real estate (rents, cultivation) and the labor of skilled slaves: 22.1ff.  Don’t wake up too early or be a micromanager: 11; Just like you use someone skilled to bake your bread, get a good financial manager, don’t do it yourself: 19.22-31; using money badly and obsessing about it are the problem, not wealth itself: 14.
7. MANN inv. No. 8598. Public domain image.  Images of one tablet from the Sulpician Archive are from G. Camodeca, “Il Senatore Q. Cassius Gratus e Un Suo Affare a Puteoli. Ricomposizione Di Una Tabula Herculanensis Del Gennaio 53 (TH² A 32).” Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik 217 (2021): 261–65.  On properly kept private tabula vs. messy adversaria: Cic. Ros. Com. 1-3, 6, 9, Cluent. 82; on commercial records: Font. 11; bank account records: Verr. 2.1.100, 102, 188; on public financial records Flac. 21, Pis. 61; distrust of Greek record keeping: Flac. 20, Saur. 18. The best discussion of the evidence for Roman deposit banking remains Kay, Philip. Rome’s Economic Revolution. OUP 2014, showing practice well attested by the early 2^nd century BCE, if not earlier. On role of gold, see essays in A. Suspène, M. Blet-Lemarquand, F. Duyrat and S. Nieto-Pelletier, AVREVS. Le Pouvoir de l’or, édité par. Ausonius, 2023.
8. Cic. Quint. 17: Cum pecuniam C. Quinctius P. Scapulae debuisset, per te, C. Aquili, decidit P. Quinctius quid liberis eius dissolveret. Hoc eo per te agebatur quod propter aerariam rationem non satis erat in tabulis inspexisse quantum deberetur nisi ad Castoris quaesisses quantum solveretur. Decidis statuisque tu, propter necessitudinem quae tibi cum Scapulis est, quid eis ad denarium solveretur. Translation on screen is adapted from the Loeb. Image is fair use of the Digitales Forum Romanum reconstruction of the temple of Castor in its third phase post 117 BCE.
9. Cic. Font. 1-2: itaque contendo post legem Valeriam latam . . . te . . . quaestore usque ad T. Crispinum quaestorem aliter neminem solvisse; hunc omnium superiorum, huius autem omnis qui postea fuerint auctoritatem dico secutos. Quid accusas, quid reprendis? Nam quod in tabulis dodrantariis et quadrantariis… There is value in A. Dyck, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Speeches on Behalf of Marcus Fonteius and Marcus Aemilius Scaurus. Translation, Introduction, Historical Commentary. OUP 2012 but on the author’s conviction: G W. Griggs, LA Times March 27, 2004. Vel. Pat. 2.23.2: In huius locum suffectus Valerius Flaccus, turpissimae legis auctor, qua creditoribus quadrantem solvi iusserat, cuius facti merita eum poena intra biennium consecuta est. Fair use image of MFABoston 1987.301: detail of reverse.  The type of over ambitious use of the lex Valeria of 86 BCE in economic history is seen in A. Collins and J. Walsh. “Debt deflationary crisis in the late Roman republic.” Ancient Society 45 (2015): 125-170, relying on C. T. Barlow, “The Roman government and the Roman economy, 92-80 BC.” The American Journal of Philology 101.2 (1980): 202-219 who claims it was response to a drop in real estate prices on the basis of Cic. Q. Rosc. 33. 
10. See 8 above. Sal. Cat. 33.2: Saepe maiores vostrum,⁠ miseriti plebis Romanae, decretis suis inopiae eius opitulati sunt, ac novissume memoria nostra propter magnitudinem aeris alieni, volentibus omnibus bonis, argentum aere solutum est. Cited in MRR under 86 BCE Valerius Flaccus’ suffect consulship, alongside Font. 1-2, regarding legislation.
11. Drusus’ legislation: Pliny NH 33.13. The Lex Papiria: semuncial standard introduced and something with small silver coinage: Plin. NH 33.46, cf. coin legends: RRC 338: L·P·D·A·P and RRC 340/3 and 337/4: E·L·P. On murder of A. Sempronius Asellio: App. BC 1.54, Liv. Per. 74, and Val. Max. 9.7 with Brennan, T. Corey. The Praetorship in the Roman Republic, 2 Vols. Oxford, 2000: p. 443. On 88 BCE, the text of Fest 516L is uncertain: Unciaria lex appellari est quam L. Sulla et Q. Pom[peius Rufus] tulerunt qua sanctum est ut debitores decimam partem … “The law called that of the twelfth was carried by Sulla and Pompeius Rufus (coss. 88) by which it was sanctioned that debtors a tenth part…[the rest is lost]” (my own translation). Gratidianus’ legislation: Cic. Off. 3.80; Pliny NH 33.132. For discussion of Drusus and Gratidianus see: A. Sharpless, L. M. Yarrow, and K. Lockyear, ‘Economic Fears and Realities in the 80s BCE’ in K. Butcher and M. Ponting, Rome and the Coinages of the Mediterranean Conference Proceedings.  RNS. Forthcoming. Fair use image of reverse of BM 1860,0328.55 (RRC 340/3) and public domain image of reverse of Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität ID156 (RRC 340/2).
12. See 8ff. above. Public domain image of reverse of Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität ID158 (RRC 340/1).
13. Cic. Quinct. 17: Quinctius porro istum posse facere videbat, debere intellegebat, mentiri, quia causa cur mentiretur non erat, non putabat; quasi domi nummos haberet, ita constituit Scapulis se daturum…[Naevium] rogat ut curet quod dixisset. On strong boxes in Pompeii: E. B. Andersson. 2022. “The economic centre of Pompeii revealed by Roman cash keeping” in Archaeology and Economy in the Ancient World Heidelberg Propylaeum, 159-172. Fair use of images of the atrium of Pompeii IX.14.4 from pompeiiinpictures.com.
14. Cic. Caes. 11: …e municipio Tarquiniensi, qui et domi suae cum primis honestus existimatus est, et Romae argentariam non ignobilem fecit. Is habuit in matrimonio Caesenniam eodem e municipio, summo loco natam et probatissimam feminam… Public domain image of the sanctuary at Tarquinia.
15. Val. Max. 4.8.3: qui Catilinae furore ita consternata re publica, ut ne a locupletibus quidem debitae pecuniae propter tumultum pretiis possessionum deminutis solui creditoribus possent, cum centies atque quinquagies sestertii summam in faenore haberet, neque de sorte quemquam debitorum suorum neque de usura appellari a suis passus est, quantumque in ipso fuit, amaritudinem publicae confusionis priuata tranquillitate mitigauit, opportune mirificeque testatus se nummorum suorum, non ciuilis sanguinis esse faeneratorem. Fair use image from Soldovieri, Umberto. “Un’inedita tessera nummularia da Pompei.” Sylloge epigraphica Barcinonensis: SEBarc (2020): 195-198.  There are at least two reported tesserae nummulariae from 63 BCE, but these lack archaeological provenance and photographs.
16. Cic. Att. 12.25: mihi et res et condicio placet, sed ita ut numerato malim quam aestimatione. … unde ergo numerato? HS [600k] exprimes ab Hermogene, cum praesertim necesse erit; et domi video esse HS [600k]. reliquae pecuniae vel usuram Silio pendemus… Public domain photograph of the Janiculo. Fair use image of the strong-box found at Oplontis Villa B from pompeiiinpictures.com. This strong box was already more than 200 years old when it was buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 BCE.  See also n. 13 above.
17. No notes. Just breath.
18. Cic. Att. 7.18.4: Quintus frater laborat ut tibi quod debet ab Egnatio solvat; nec Egnatio voluntas deest nec parum locuples est, sed cum tale tempus sit ut Q. Titinius (multum enim est nobiscum) viaticum se neget habere idemque debitoribus suis denuntiarit ut eodem faenore uterentur, atque hoc idem etiam L. Ligus fecisse dicatur, nec hoc tempore aut domi nummos Quintus habeat aut exi<ge>re ab Egnatio aut versuram usquam facere possit, miratur <te> non habuisse rationem huius publicae difficultatis. I wonder if this use of rationem might give us a clue to its employment in no. 8 above.  Public domain image of UK Portable Antiquities Scheme, Treasure case: 2005 T268. The standard work on arm-purses remains: E. Birley, ‘Roman bronze arm-purses’, Archaeologia Aeliana 4th series, 41, 1963, 5-17; a survey of new evidence and fresh analyses is needed, esp. volumetric measurements for carrying capacity.
19. Cic. Att. 8.7.3. Translationese my own. The misreadings of this passage have been exacerbated by Shackleton-Bailey’s translation and commentary, now perpetuated in the Loeb. Detail of public domain drawing by G. Rehlender from History of All Nations, volume 5 (1905): 118 and fair use of photograph of part of the obverse of BM 2002,0102.3767 (RRC 396/1).
20. Cic. Att. 5.21.12.  The screenshot translation is by E. Shuckburgh.  I skipped the full Latin as the relevant bit is on the screen and the whole passage is long and this handout a bit outrageous at this point.  Fair use screenshot of map drawn in Google Earth. Tzounakas, Spyridon. “Cicero and Brutus’ loan to the Salaminians: a case for (self-)praise and justification.” Pan N. S. 9 (2020): 5-16; Zarecki, Jonathan. “The Cypriot Exemption from Evocatio and the Character of Cicero’s Proconsulship.” Greece & Rome 59, no. 1 (2012): 46-55. Cf. Andreau, Jean. Bruto Usurario Nell’epistolario Ciceroniano, L’indipendenza Di Lucilio, by Giuseppina Allegri and Bruno Zucchelli. Latomus 38, no. 3 (1979): 743–45. On Kaunos deposit, Cic. Fam. 13.56.
21. Cic. Att. 6.1.15: De Bibuli edicto, nihil novi praeter illam exceptionem de qua tu ad me scripseras ‘nimis gravi praeiudicio in ordinem nostrum.’ ego tamen habeo ἰσοδυναμοῦσαν sed tectiorem ex Q. Muci P. f. edicto Asiatico, ‘extra quam si ita negotium gestum est ut eo stari non oporteat ex fide bona.’ Fair use screenshot of map drawn in Google Earth. Cf. A.D. Fernández, “A Ciceronian exemplum: Cicero’s Self-Portrait as Provincial Governor through his Letters.” Studies on Roman Thought and Its Reception (2022): 33.
22. Cic. Att. 6.1.16: usuras eorum quas pactionibus adscripserant servavit etiam Servilius; ego sic: diem statuo satis laxam, quam ante si solverint, dico me centesimas ducturum, si non solverint, ex pactione. itaque et Graeci solvunt tolerabili faenore et publicanis res est gratissima, si illa iam habent pleno modio, verborum honorem, invitationem crebram. quid plura? sunt omnes ita mihi familiares ut se quisque maxime putet. Network map is my own.  On Cicero’s construction of his own identity in his letters, esp. to friends, see F. Martelli, Souvenirs of Cicero: shaping memory in the Epistulae ad familiares. Oxford University Press, 2024, esp. ch. 2 which argues that Cilicia serves as a framing device in the vulgate organization of the letters to friends.
23. Tac. Ann. 6.16: Interea magna vis accusatorum in eos inrupit qui pecunias faenore auctitabant adversum legem dictatoris Caesaris qua de modo credendi possidendique intra Italiam caventur, omissam olim, quia privato usui bonum publicum postponitur. sane vetus urbi faenebre malum et seditionum discordiarumque creberrima causa eoque cohibebatur antiquis quoque et minus corruptis moribus. nam primo duodecim tabulis sanctum ne quis unciario faenore amplius exerceret… . J. L. Posadas Sánchez, “Tácito y la fidelidad a las fuentes jurídicas primarias.” Revista Internacional de Derecho Romano 32 (2024): 451-479 argues that Tacitus had access to accurate legal records of the twelve tables.  I am more skeptical.  The most complete survey of modern views on (and skepticism of) the literary tradition remains Monteverdi, Donatella. La questione decemvirale: itinerari e risultati di una complessa vicenda storiografica. Padova: CEDAM, 2019.  Public domain image of the Tabula Capuana, an Etruscan calendar from c. 470 BCE now in the Altes Museum.  It is only partially deciphered.  It is suggestive of how much difficulty later Romans may have had reading the original text of the XII tables even if it was preserved in their day, cf. confusion over text of Lapis Niger.
24. Cic. Fam. 5.6 (62 BCE) and Att. 1.12 (61 BCE). Public domain image of the obverse of ANS 1896.7.90 (RRC 415/1) and fair use image of obverse of BnF REP-18366 (RRC 416/2).
25. Cic. Q.Fr. 2.15.4 (54 BCE): Ambitus redit immanis. numquam fuit par. Id. Quint. faenus fuit bessibus ex triente coitione Memmi et consulum cum Domitio. hanc Scaurus unus <vix potest> vincere. Messalla flaccet. non dico ὑπερβολάς; vel HS centiens constituunt in praerogativa pronuntiare. Public domain image of Berlin 18309499 (RRC 435/1). 

Further information that may be of use with regard to this talk (and that I cannot resist sharing.)

The Romans operated on the basis that 6000 denarii, their primary silver denomination, equaled one talent. They presumed 3 denarii per cistophori or 2000 cistophori to the talent.  One talent would this way slightly over 50 pounds or almost exactly 23 kilograms.

How rich do you need to be to fund a legion for a year?!  Cf. Plin. NH 33.147: ex eadem gente M. Crassus negabat locupletem esse nisi qui reditu annuo legionem tueri posset. A good guess is about 116 talents.  Our knowledge of legionary pay between 141 BCE and Caesar is a matter of deduction based on testimony on earlier and later pay rates, not direct evidence.

Examples from Cicero converted between the unit of account (sestertii), the most common payment (denarii), and the nominal talent.

Sestertii	Denarii	Talents	Expense Type	Citation and Year
30,000	7500	1.25	an inn (deversorium)	A.10.5, 49 BCE
80,000	20,000	3.3	Young Marcus’ annual allowance while in Athens, derived from the rents from an apartment block	A.16.1,44 BCE
101,000	25,250	4.2	A farm near Arpinum with a fishpond, fountains, palaestra, etc.	FrQ 3.1 Sept. 54 BCE
130,000	32,500	5.4	a house in Naples	A.1.6, 68 BCE
250,000	62,500	10.4	government estimate of the value of Cicero’s Formiae property	A.4.2.9, 57 BCE
500,000	125,000	20.8	government estimate of the value of Cicero’s Tusculan property	A.4.2.9, 57 BCE
1,000,000	250,000	41.7	a building Cicero’s brother bought in Rome in the Argiletum	A.1.14, 61 BCE
2,000,000	500,000	83.3	Government estimate of the value of Cicero’s Palatine house	A.4.2.9, 57 BCE
3,040,000	760,000	126.7	a house near the temple of Strenia near the upper via Sacra	A.15.26.4, 44 BCE
3,500,000	875,000	145.8	Price Cicero paid Crassus for his Palatine house	F5.6, 62 BCE
4,300,000	1,075,000	179.2	A fleet to control the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian Seas	Pro. Flacc. 30
11,500,000	2,875,000	479.2	Cost of 1000 iugera of land	A.12.2a, 45 BCE
13,400,000	3,350,000	558.3	Paid for a house in Rome by Messalla	A.1.13, 61 BCE
18,000,000	4,500,000	750.0	Treasury allocation to Piso for his governorship	In Piso 86
40,000,000	10,000,000	1,666.7	Authorized for Pompey’s grain supply command	FrQ. 2.5 56 BCE

For a scholarly yet accessible book length treatment on the modern role of interest rates in regulating economies:

Moore, Basil. Horizontalists and verticalists: the macroeconomics of credit money. originally published 1988, re-issued 2025 with new introduction and retrospective.

The critical study of Cicero and economics is the hard-to-find, mega-monograph:

M. Ionnatou, Affaires d’argent dans la correspondance de Cicéron: l’aristocratie sénatoriale face à ses dettes (2006).

It is on my desk back in the US and I am STILL coming to grips with it.