Inde ab eo anno, quo Cn. et P. Lentuli consules fuerunt, cum deficerent vectigalia, tum centum millibus hominum tum pluribus multo frumentarias et nummariás tesseras ex aere⁠ et patrimonio meo dedi.

Res Gestae 18

Beginning from the consulship of Gnaeus and Publius Lentulus, when there was a shortfall in revenues, I furnished TESSERAE for grain and coin from my own money and patrimony, sometimes to 100,000 people, sometimes to many more.

Res Gestae 18

I’m on a train and cannot check Clare Rowan’s book, but I very much want to think more of this passage. Why give out tokens in lieu of coins?! Why not just give out coins?!

Update from the library. Guess what? This is a case of a disputed reconstruction of a fragmentary text. Nothing in Rowan because most modern editions of the text use a different restoration. After my puzzlement at not finding it in her book I turned to her colleague Alison Cooley on the Res Gestae. Nothing in her commentary but a clear indication of where the Latin text does not survive and her prefered reconstruction.

…frume[ntarios et n]umma[rio]s t[ributus ex horr]eo et patr[i]monio…

The lacuna in bold another restoration is what got me all needlessly excited. So I needed anapparatus criticus to catch up on how we ended up with the now widely preferred reconstruction. My suspicion was that this was because of the Greek translation that also survives, but I wanted to see how I’d been misled by the internet.

Augustus, Jean Gagé, and Wilhelm Weber. Res gestae divi Avgvsti : ex monvmentis Ancyrano et antiocheno latinis : Ancyrano et Apolloniensi graecis : texte établi et commenté (avec un appendice et 4 planches hors-texte). [2d ed.]. Paris: Société d’éditions : Les Belles lettres, 1950. Print.

Gagé prefers the same reading of Cooley (as has basically everyone for a long while), but he reports (p. 106) a number of previously suggested alternatives

Mommsen 1883 wanted ‘tributus ex agro’

Wölfflin 1986 wanted ‘teseris diuisis ex patr…’

Craget 1919 and Schmidt 1887 both preferred the reading which I originally posted above.

Markowski 1932-1933 suggest ‘tabulas e fisco…’

As you can see the Greek is far better preserved and makes clear no tokens need be involved

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We get our first scenes of Liberalitas and the money shovel starting under Nero.

The thing to read is

Beckmann, Martin. “The Function of the Attribute of Liberalitas and Its Use in the Congiarium.” American Journal of Numismatics (1989-) 27 (2015): 189–98. https://www.jstor.org/stable/90017068

.

The iconography remains incredibly consistent through out the empire. Liberalitas holds her money shovel high. (too often wrongly called a tessera in catalogues). The recipient(s) ascend the steps in a toga, often using the toga to collect their allotment of coin. The emperor is separate but present.

So when was the money shovel invented?! And what made it more convenient for Augustus to give out tesserae and then have a secondary collection point. The logistics of largess need work.

Also if there were a 100,000 plus such tesserae for any given distribution, surely some should survive?!

I was reading the Res Gestae for a totally different reason but got distracted by the above passage. ho. hum.

You can skip this post if my personal reflections aren’t your cup of tea. It is light on academics.

I’m back in London. I was supposed to be here end of March. That got complicated because of stuff back in the states. I promised the ICS a minimum of six weeks residency. They are very chill but I have an incredible compulsion to do what I say I will do. Hitting a full six weeks is extra challenging now that the weeks in May and June I’d marked out to be here have been further complicated by my experimental time slot. So my beloved and I sat down with the calendar Friday evening after the kids went to bed and looked week by week and found that if I flew out yesterday I’d be able to maximize my library time and meet most US based commitments both personal and professional. Secretly I believe he encouraged me to jump on a plane to improve my mood. It was a rough week in Brooklyn and I’ve been despairing of being an agent of positive change or even finding contentment in my work there. Nothing dramatic just a general sense that I lack efficacy within the system.

Love comes in many forms.

And, I think he was correct. I got so much done on the day flight more than I would have in any other location, from catching up on letters of reference for deserving students to banging out edits for a chapter for an edited volume I almost dropped out of. Then I slept 11 solid hours with good REM (I never dream except to process anxiety). I woke up with great joy to be here in a clean walk-able urban center that has touches of green even in February. Right now I’m in a public university cafeteria full of diverse faculty and students eagerly engaging in conversation with no sense of impeding doom or political collapse. The only conversations I expect to have with colleagues are about my research and theirs. Paradise.

Why am I writing. It is the photo above. I snapped it this AM. It brought me joy. Nourishing our fellow humans without question or judgement is one of my deepest ethical beliefs.

As soon as I snapped the photo and turned to continue my walk, I dramatically lost my balance. I do this a few times a year. Partly it is my neurological condition and partly it is the years of injuries to my joints from similar falls going back to early childhood. During one of the countless “special ed” assessments of my childhood, a therapist walked behind me while I was kneeling on a mat and shoved me over. She explained afterwards they had to test if I could catch myself and she was very sorry for having done that. Just one of the reasons I’m suspicious of therapists and avoidant of those who offer help. I was enrolled in gymnastics and dance as ‘fun’ O.T. , needless to say I sucked at these activities. My swim instructors quipped to my mother that they didn’t know someone could be ‘unbalanced’ ‘even in the water’.

Over a lifetime, I’ve accumulated dead bone matter in my ankles and numerous other abnormalities. People say I’m ‘careless’ or ‘clumsy’ or ‘spacy’ and I should ‘move with greater care’ or just be more ‘mindful’. I’ve given up every form of aerobic exercise above a slowish walk and the very occasional swim. I will no longer apologize for asking anyone I’m walking with to match their pace to mine. I wear shoe inserts that help some with balance and often strap on braces hidden by my boots to add an extra layer of protection. All of this has minimized debilitating injury. It has been probably 5 plus years since I’ve been in a boot or needed crutches.

Still I fall. I’m proud of this one. I let the phone go fast enough. In fact I threw it as I fell, many yards away. This let my hands be free and I was wearing a back pack over both shoulders (another safety procedure I practice). I fell so well that I broke no skin on my hands or knees. I spread my weight so completely that beside a minor ache in the wrist opposite the ankle that betrayed me, I’m fine. The crowds were huge (it was everyone eating and gathering to eat the free food), but I took a deep breath and didn’t rush to re assure them as they gathered. Pride has no place in these moments. I did a full body scan while still on the pavement assessing injuries and deciding what joints were weight bearing and slowly testing each one. As I got to my feet I smiled and assured everyone who had gathered I needed no assistance and then continued on my way even slower .

Each fall feels like a premonition of my final fall. The one that will leave me permanently disabled or dead. I’ve seen it in my minds eye for too long. I try to tell myself the research in to exoskeleton robotic tails will continue to develop and that I will be an ideal candidate for the prototypes. I will finally be a cyborg! Or maybe I’ll just get hit by bus and the end will be quick rather than indignantly slow.

Morbid I know. Anyway. All of which is to say I’m writing this because even the best fall leaves me mentally shaken and a little sore. I needed to write.

Humanity is good. And my falls keep me humble. I learn to see the goodness in those who gather to help. I celebrate these moments of generosity from confused strangers uncertain of what to do but ready to act.

May we all be ready to act to help one another.

In Spring 1999 in my first grad seminar with Fergus Millar and Robert Parker, I gave a presentation inspired by my future (at that time unknown to me scholar).

Clarke, Katherine. “In Search of the Author of Strabo’s Geography.” The Journal of Roman Studies 87 (1997): 92–110. https://doi.org/10.2307/301371.

I read this and thought, “this! exactly exactly this!” what I want to do with my PhD dissertation and I wanted to focus on Polybius. Within in the next 12 months I realized I couldn’t survive a thesis on Polybius, not because of the work, but because I needed to move on from my then-supervisor and his sexualized approach to mentorship (Thanks Fergus!). With the help of Michael Crawford and a conversation on the train platform of Benevento, I decided to throw myself into the Post-Polybian world. A world I have always seen through the lens of my first love of Polybius.

Today, I’m seeing if I can’t bang out a short chapter on Dionysius (another one) for a conference volume. I’m trying to capture something of how I read Dionysius by referring to past scholarship my own forthcoming work. I realized I want to cite this very first seminar presentation. Of course it was never published and it is more didactic, but wow, I’m pleased with my young mind. I’d have liked me as a student. That methods seminar also had Esther Eidinow and Luke Pitcher and Peter Liddel and others I’m sure others I should remember.

Handout

Speaking Notes

Not covering everything on the handout

Basic Bio:

• Born circa 205
• Megalopolis in Arcadia, part of the Achaean league
• Father eminent statesman; raised with the expectation of reach high political office and influence
• We’ll come to some of the details of his political and military career later.
• In the aftermath of the 3^rd Macedonian war, as a result of political rivalry with in Achaea and his family’s cool attitudes towards Rome’s intervention in the East, Polybius along with 1000 of other Achaeans was deported to Rome for ‘questioning’ and detained without resolution for 16 years.
• Catalyst for writing career?  Even suggested that the part of the history covering the 3^rd Macedonian war began as his own detailed notes in preparation for examination in Rome on his own ‘anti-Roman’ actions.
• Relationship with Scipios, come to later.
• Travel
• Return to Greece after the Achaean War and carried out the settlement imposed by the 10 Roman commissioners.

Thought it would be most interesting to skim through the obvious examples of self-expression, touching on just few points, and then focus on one famous example of the ambiguity and sophistication Polybius uses to express own opinions and motivations.

Plan of Histories was originally 30 books with the first 2 books serving as pre-history/extended introduction covering 264 to 220.  The history proper covers book 3 through 29 down to 167.  The last 10 books, well excluding book 40 which though wholly lost served as an index, followed events down to 145.  Walbank has won acceptance for the idea that Polybius further sub-divided the last 10 books into those covering the period of un-contested Roman rule and those following his geographical excursus in 34, 150 following which he alludes to in book 3 as the point of turmoil from which he has to write as if starting over.

As you can see he has two separate introductions—most notable because he abandons the  tradition of introducing himself as the author of the text.  In fact he never does introduce himself though his self references seem to assume the audience is aware of his name and dual role.  The closest he comes in the actual introductions is in III.5 where he points out that one of the reasons for ‘starting a fresh’ for the period of turmoil is his own personal involvement in those events.  But to be honest, it is hard to see any drastic change in style in these last 4 books—this could of course be because of their fragmentary nature.

His other unusual feature is his variation between the narrative voice of the 1^st person singular and the 1^st person plural as well as discussing himself as a participant in events in the 3^rd person.  Clarke, in her Strabo article, suggests that the 1^st person plural could be being used in an analogous way to the modern scientific passive voice in that it lends credibility by appearing unbiased, but it could also be seen as a way of identifying with the audience, which Polybius generally identifies as Greeks, but does express awareness of possible Roman readers. The variation between 1^st and 3^rd person is less confusing, Polybius tells us he does this for reasons of modesty, XXXVI.12, but any reader would conclude that the shift allows one to keep separate Polybius, the political figure, and Polybius, the historian.  He also expresses concern over this duality of  roles. This is seen in both XXXVI.1 and XXXVIII.4, cited on your handout under Voice as a Historian. And while it causes him to some personal conflict he also is a firm believer that only some one who participates in a type of activity can write about it (Book 12), as well as the need to limit the range of a history to that which reliable sources can be obtained, i.e. contemporary history. so it would seem that he thought his dual role should neither be uncommon among writers, nor an inconvenience.

It is however his dual nature both in the sense of being a write and a historian as well as being a Greek who associated and advised the Roman elite which causes modern historians so much concern of his own bias.  Walbank, to whom most concede, suggests that Polybius shows pro-Achaean opinions from the beginning the end of the histories, but that in the last 10 books he also shows sympathy towards the Romans.  It is also assumed that as an Achaean Polybius is anti-Aetolian, the traditional enemies of his league, and he does use seriously derogatory language through out the first part of the histories, but Sacks has shown that from the War with Antiochus onwards he sympathizes with this age old enemies.  It almost seems as if upon assuming his identity in exile he changes from being an Achaean to being a ‘Greek.’  This can also be seen in his sympathy towards the Greeks for the Roman conquest of 146, but out rightly blames his own countrymen for bringing it upon them. 

But more recently modern historians have set aside the simplistic question of where is his bias to looking for conscious techniques or trends in Polybius’ writing.  Notably Eckstein who attempted to show an overall moralizing in the histories vs. a Machiavellian or pragmatic outlook.  While, he is largely unconvincing on the moral basis for his observations he does extensively outline those places in the narrative where Polybius as the narrator interjects judgements or comparisons.  There is much room for further discussion on these points of where Polybius’ opinions along side the chronological history.  Davidson is also concerned with Polybius form of self expression; he used a modified definition of focalization to describe what he termed the ‘Gaze’ in the histories, namely allowing the reader to see events and characters from various vantage points. 

Oddly enough in his discussion he does not touch upon possibly the most famous and controversial point at which Polybius uses the views of others within to supplement his record of events.  This is XXXVI.9 which you have on your handout.

While you read count the number of opinions which Polybius differentiates

-break to read it-

There are normally thought to be 4 opinions, but a case may be made for a fifth.  A variety of scholars have wanted do approach this text differently.  One school of though assumes that one of the opinions is Polybius’

This include Walbank who supports the last one, based on its length and emphatic placement, and his inability to believe Polybius would be critical of an act, i.e. the destruction of carthage that he participated in.

Musti and Petzold disagree.  And see support for the two middle negative opinions in the rest of the histories, namely Book X.36.2 where Polybius says same acts must be done to maintain and empire as to keep it and Book V.11.5 where Philip V is condemned for wonton distruction of cities he conquers.  They also bring in ‘Polybian’ passage from Diodorus, but their origin is doubtful.

Others are less limiting in their view of the possibilities:

Eckstein briefly looks at it to try to find Polybius’ views on Carthage not Rome.

Momigliano suggests that while the majority of the history is intended to explain Rome to the Greeks this passage is part of a latter trend to explain Greeks to Rome. Fanciful?

Harris suggests that if all the opinions can be supported from the histories may be they all reflect part of Polybius’ thinking. 

Ferrary does not commit to any one or all being owned by Polybius, but does fall up connections between the various opinions and other passages in the Histories.

Though, Davidson did not discuss this passage his technique of focusing on narration versus bias might lend him to agree with a view that the passage is a way to balance the Carthaginian perspective and the Roman perspective of the conflict and maybe even illustrate that with the development of its empire Rome has brought more participants into the discussion.

Any thoughts on this passage….

 or any questions from parts of the handout I did not concentration….

Check:

The 38.4 I was meaning is, I think, 38.6 in Shuckburgh (Hultsch’s text). Along with that see 39.3 (39.14 in S., I think) and 39.5 (39.16 in S.) for Pol. being historically present (i.e. actually there at the time and doing). Other historiographical presences you’ve spotted, but the historical presences are interesting, too. A mix of the two kinds of presence in 3.22.4 and surely in 3.29.1 (n.b. the present tenses: he was there and listening); 31.25.5a (31.24.4 in S.) looks like another example of Pol. there and listening (I think Fergus is fond of that one; may be a ref. to it in his piece in JRS 1984, 1-19.). I’m inclined to believe that Pol. is unique in this way.

There are any number of bad actors from the cultural heritage world in the files. There is some squicky stuff, but none about coins I’ve seen, all statues and gems. I’m going to leave the publication of that to those who can better contextualize the networks of power that bring together the trade in antiquities and those willing to hide assets and exploit children. Here are some examples suggestive of what some in trade thought Jeffrey might like. Basically a number of individuals thought giving Jeffrey expensive ancient art or helping him source pieces to purchase would help them get into his good books for reasons I hate to imagine. Once there is proper reporting on antiquities in the Epstein files. I’ll come back and link here.

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But I came here mostly to post this follow up to an earlier post on this blog [included a threat to sue me!].

Another article with more background

You can read more about Hubbard and others controversial figures in the field of classics here.

The letter in the article is below. Epstein was convicted in 2008.

This reply arrived late yesterday as I was all in on the apex theory of Musa’s name. I still think that is most likely, but I thought v briefly I should consider if the name might be Oscan.

First stop Katherine McDonald’s website, a leading expert and great at making resources available to the rest of us. The books I want to consult but cannot yet:

Helmut Rix (2001) Sabellische Texte.

Michael Crawford (2011) Imagines Italicae. [PDFs now on file]

I put out a bsky call to see if someone might have shareable pdfs [it worked!]. These are the moments really wish I was at an institution with a research library attached. I know I can check these in a month in person at the ICS, or I could ILL (a major resource ask to ship the physical book) and I really just want to do a quick scan. Sure I could drive to Princeton, but that’s 4 hour commitment. Ditto Columbia etc. And then there is always the convo about whether I’m allowed in to the library as scholar from another institution. I hate it. I think I might just purchase Imagines Italicae, but I’ll pause for a moment as it is NOT CHEAP. We’ll see how tax season goes. Ok enough whining.

Salomies, Olli. (2012) “The Nomina of the Samnites. A Checklist,” Arctos 46, 137-185.

This let me confirm Musa is not an attested Oscan name.

But look here! Pomponius is!

Isn’t that fun?!

Farney 2007 discusses the Pomponii primarily as Sabine, not Samnite or Oscan (p. 120-122, and passim)

Based on Salomies’ list of attestations of the gens as an Oscan name here’s spread [edit: missing Potentia].

Google Earth kept crashing, I’m guessing my internet cannot handle it with a full household of other people having fun doing weekend stuff online. But I got this drawn before I stopped fighting it. It’s ugly but complete except for Potentia and some labels (color is meaningless) and you can manipulate the view if you can access google earth without it crashing on you. I’ve got to find a better means of mapping…

So what does the marked V that is often used for O look like.

Interesting but could this explain the orthography of MVSA on RRC 410? I am not convinced, but I don’t want to lose the idea.

We’ve also been discussing the orthography of FVRI on RRC 414 and I can find no suggestion this gens is associated with the Oscan language.

Skip down if you just want coin stuff.

Prelude

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ll have noticed I’m on a journey to embrace many of my complex feelings about my work and my own ways of moving through the world as someone who is definitely some flavor of neurospicy and with learning disabilities (US term, UK readers should read as ‘learning difficulties’). A huge part of this is my relationship to language acquisition and how my early teachers conditioned me to think about what I could and could not succeed at learning. This is intimately tied to how I ended up in my profession, the entanglement of the two is inescapable, as they have formed the me that I am for both good and bad. Vague, yes, but really I’m just gesturing towards stuff I’ve already articulated, see for example “Why Latin?”, a favorite post of mine.

The mind-f*ck part of ending up in Classics-adjacent work as someone told they could not acquire languages well or succeed at them is that there is some part of me that believes I can never truly succeed at my own profession.

Obviously I have lots of strong evidence to contradict these thoughts, but it is baggage I’m still working on and why I’m tend to freak out a little when I need to go deep in anything philological.

Today’s freak out was inspired by RRC 410. I’ve got a substantial almost complete article I’m working on pushing out the door for first feedback from friends and then proper peer-review. I started writing it for an edited volume but it jumped the shark and needs a different home. I’m on a second full pass on editing and engaging in image selection and creation as I go, so I can be sure the text and visuals communicate together.

While looking for a legible specimen with a permissive image license, I noticed a weird feature of the legend and also observed that Crawford had noted the same feature but not commented on it. Oh! fascinating, I thought, and threw up a social media post that started to spiral. I put it on social media because in the first instance I deemed it irrelevant to my article and thus immediate goals. I flagged it as philological and thus outside my area even in my wording of those posts.

And now, I’m here blogging. Why?

Because ORTHOGRAPHY is a key aspect of DATING INSCRIPTIONS. I know this. There is even a sentence about this in my very article bemoaning that a stone inscription I discuss is lost and I can’t review letter forms to aid in dating. And, wait for it,

COIN LEGENDS are INSCRIPTIONS. So logically I must engage in orthographic analysis if I want to be complete in my review of potential dating clues. I’m kicking myself that the part of my brain that tells me I don’t do language stuff (even as I clearly do) tricks me into trying to ignore critical evidence.

So after that prelude let’s see what’s up with the letter forms on Musa’s coin.

Letter Forms

Scroll down to bottom of post for social media screen shots of which this is a continuation.

Numismatists are familiar with some basic epigraphic oddities common on the republican series. Ligature being perhaps the most common (and boy, have we discussed or alluded to the phenomenon a great deal on this blog). There is also the use of ‘archaic’ letter forms and spellings, these aren’t limited to coins but familiar to epigraphers working in the same period. Think of the 5 barred M used to abbreviate the praenomen Manius to differentiate it from Marcus, the open P that looks like a Greek Pi with a short right leg, the bent ‘italic’ L early in series but disappearing over time. I’m sure there are many more. As to spelling ‘variants’ most often the ‘difference’ is with the vowels, POBLICI for a gentleman we’d call now Publicius, or MAXSVMVS for someone we’d refer to as Maximus. The RRC series occasionally also has vowel reduplication like FEELIX to differentiate long and short vowels. Words are often truncated and abbreviated. Interestingly this often involves removing the terminal ending that would let us establish the case of words and thus its grammatical expression. We tend to assume in most of these truncations of moneyer’s names that the missing letters are -VS (nominative). Frankly coins are deeply untapped resource for studying republican orthography and its evolution. What first century Latin doesn’t have is a great deal of punctuation–just our favorite interpunct, that handy dot in the middle register which commonly separates words. There are the lines used above, below, through, and around, letters that are being used to represent numerals. But that is irrelevant. The best I’ve got thus far is the apex. Trying to understand the origins of this irregularly marking, got me to this article

Bodel, John. “Paragrams, punctuation, and system in ancient Roman script.” In The shape of script : how and why writing systems change, edited by Stephen Houston. School for Advanced Research advanced seminar series, 65-92. Santa Fe (N. M.): School for Advanced Research Pr., 2012.

I’m in love with it. It is such a good survey of evolution of letter forms and other orthographic elements (numerals, punctuation, etc…). However in it is survey quality it only cites examples and other scholarship in an illustrative not comprehensive way. Understandable and yet I’m hungry for more.

Having stated the rules which we must follow in speaking, I will now proceed to lay down the rules which must be observed when we write. Such rules are called orthography by the Greeks; let us style it the science of writing correctly. This science does not consist merely in the knowledge of the letters composing each syllable (such a study is beneath the dignity of a teacher of grammar), but, in my opinion, develops all its subtlety in connection with doubtful points.  For instance, while it is absurd to place a apex over all long syllables since the quantity of most syllables is obvious from the very nature of the word which is written, it is all the same occasionally necessary, since the same letter involves a different meaning according as it is long or short. For example we determine whether malus is to mean an “apple tree” or a “bad man” by the use of the apex; palus means a “stake,” if the first syllable is long, a “marsh,” if it be short; again when the same letter is short in the nominative and long in the ablative, we generally require the apex to make it clear which quantity to understand.

Quintilian, Inst. Orat. 1.7.1-3

This is great, as is Bodel’s discussion of its highly irregular implementation and lookalikes. But it doesn’t get to my question of WHEN this started to be used. So I got back to:

Oliver, R. P. (1966). Apex and Sicilicus. American Journal of Philology, 87 (2), 129–170. https://doi.org/10.2307/292702

He states confidently “Diacritical signs first appear on inscriptions of the lastdecade of the second century B. C.” (p. 129) But then gives no examples! I want to scream. “The apex is found in thousands of inscriptions, and also inthe few surviving papyri and wax tablets, of the last six decades of the Republic and the first two centuries of the Principate,after which it becomes increasingly rare.” (p.131). I have learned from his footnotes our friend Garrucci tackled this subject, but that the author considers as the standard work:

J. Christiansen, De apicibus et I longis inscriptionum Latinarum (Husumi, 1889).

I’m giving up on Oliver and diving into Christiansen hoping for actual early examples I can visually compare. Unsurprisingly, a German scholar of the late 19th century is VERY fulsome in his citations. Although, can we talk about an age where a classics doctoral dissertation could be just 61 pages?!Anyway, page 4 the very first example given is a coin reference to what is now known as RRC 414 (L. Furius Cn. F. Brocchius). The author is relying on CIL for numismatic data (it seems) and thus assumes these denarii were made c. 55 BCE (700 C.U.C.). The does not make my life easier as I cannot confirm that certain coins exist for all they are discussed and illustrated by Riccio and seem to have been accepted by Mommsen (with an approximate date of 154 BCE (600 C.U.C.)). While Riccio’s illustrations below don’t show any apex on the V the transcription in CIL suggests some specimens may have one. The L. FVRI bronzes will have to wait for another day.

The second citation is to Musa’s coinage (RRC 410) which in CIL is dated to 60 BCE (695). First non-coin citation, cf. 44 BCE?.

CIL 1.1009 is typically dated loosely to the age of Cicero and Augustus. It has an apex over the e in leti and the o of hora. CIL 1.1194 from Minturnae has 18(!) apices in the six lines of verse (iambic trimeters) composed about one of freedwomen commemorated. Dating is again difficult. Some of the spellings, such as the use of ei in domineis and leiberate and veiginti might point to 1st cent. BCE.

Jackpot! CIL 1.568 [= CIL 1(2), 679) is from Capua and with a consular date of 104 BCE (EDCS-17700039). Look at the word MVRVM the first V has an apex and the final VM are in ligature. There are other fun orthographic features of this stone, but I’m satisfied that by 104 BCE the apex was in use.

I could keep looking at inscriptions and checking refs from Christiansen but I think this is good enough for now.

Link to follow up post.

Update 9 Feb 2025

Woke up Monday AM delighted to see Katherine McDonald jumped into the thread and pointed me to this:

Zair, Nicholas. “Apices and I-Longa: Introduction.” Chapter 18. In Orthographic Traditions and the Sub-Elite in the Roman Empire, 207–14. Cambridge Classical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. [OPEN ACCESS]

Zair chapter at once points out inconsistencies in usage and also seek to generalize the rules of use. He can only give one example where it seems the writer of a papyrus intended to mark every long vowel.

Now I’m just totally geeking out at the states for usage of apices in the Laudatio Turia and Res Gestae. Notably a minority of ‘short’ vowels are also marked with apices. Besides vowel length a variety of other functions have been observed/intuited by past scholars.

Page 212 then makes clear that the trends look different if one focuses on sub-elite texts and the author believes that it is more associated with how particular writers (scribes, stonemasons, etc…) were educated.

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Record Number: EDR134386

Record Number: EDR151099

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I’m working on a publication that has gotten wildly out of hand and is now well over word count. At some point before the end of the week I may ask some of you to read it through and give me some advice on what to do with it. I’ve been doing all my writing in a word doc so you’ve seen no posts. My will has broken I need to prewrite through this topic before I can summarize what I actually think.

There are two Hoards in CHRR Online.

Gioia dei Marsi (GDM); This was first published in 1899.

Avezzano (AVZ); First published in 1990 by Fabbriticotti (Bollettino di Numismatica, p. 49-108. [email me if you want a pdf.]

Fabbriticotti concludes these are the same hoard. Now I have to work out if I believe this.

Let’s start with the 1899 testimonial.

Found in area called Alto le Tomba on land belonging to Mr. Francesco Mascitelli during argricultural work.

Bronze vessel said to hold coins. Dispersed by finders original size unknown. Some 300 recovered by Carabinieri, Another 100 reached land owner and presented to the Ministerio. The Carabinieri’s list was presented to Lolli who oversaw excavations at Avezzano.

Ambrosoli (director at Milan coin cabinet) combined the various lists and came up with his own that was then published in NSc 1899, eventually becoming RRCH 213.

Crawford in 1969 says this hoard consists of 259 coins (222 denarii and 37 quinarii) and was on deposit in the Museo Archeologico di Chieti.

Fabbriticotti had complete access to the Chieti holdings including archival papers and accession records, along side the 1899 publication and Crawford’s own observations.

The find details for Avezzano are completely different than those of Gioia dei Marsi as reported in 1899.

This hoard was revealed in 1915 after an earthquake in a previously walled up niche in the cellar of Vico Aloisi 764 and was reported as “a clay bowl full of silver coins and soil”.  It was duly surrendered to the Carabinieri, but by the time it reached the Soprintendenza, as much as half the original coins had gone missing. 

She produces this chart. And then concludes:

Rough translation (p. 51): “I believe I can state, without a shadow of a doubt, that this is the same hoard; the certainty comes, in addition to the almost identical numerical quantities, from the absence of the same moneyers, which cannot be accidental, nor merely indicative of circulation in the same area. This fact that led me to reconsider the problem of Crawford’s report that the current location of the Gioia dei Marsi hoard is the National Museum of Antiquities in Chieti, from where he supposedly obtained the information for his modifications to the first publication of the Marsican hoard. However, various checks by Dr. Campanelli, head of the Numismatic Cabinet in Chieti, have confirmed that the Gioia dei Marsi hoard was never deposited in the Chieti Museum.”

It seems someone sent Crawford the contents of the Avezzano hoard and claimed that it was the same as the Gioia dei Marsi hoard as published in 1899.

Oops.

Now can we reconstruct the real Gioia dei Marsi hoard? Well sadly the the 1899 publication just gives family names and mint marks without any more specific reference to type. The author seems to have records of 375 coins.

It asserts confidently that the Babelon’s Appuleia 3 (RRC 317/2) closes the hoard, but that is no longer a safe assumption. I’d date Saturninus’ coins to 101 BCE (see my 2021 book for notes).

The hoard’s quinarii suggest a date after this and may be the lastest coins seen in the hoard but the list is far from definitive:

RRC 331 – 6

RRC 333 – 20

What other Denarii/Issues can we be certain were in the hoard even with this poor reporting method

RRC 257 -2

Valeria (?) – 6 – too many moneyers of this family to determine issues

RRC 280 – 5

RRC 316 – 6

Servilia (?) – 14 – too many moneyers of this family to determine issues

RRC 286 – 5

RRC 325 – 5

RRC 204 – 1

RRC 231 – 1

RRC 267 – 4

Porcia (?) – 13 – too many moneyers of this family to determine issues

Pomponia (?) – 1 – too many moneyers of this family to determine issues

Pompeia (?) – 2 – likely RRC 235, but many later issues by the same family

Poblicia – 3 – either RRC 282 or 380

RRC 278 – 4

Pinaria – 4 – RRC 200 or RRC 208 or both

Papiria 3 – RRC 276 or 279 or both

Opimia – 6 – RRC 253 or 254 or both

Minucia – 26 – too many issues, earliest c. 135, latest c. 103

Memmia – 7 – too many issues, earliest c. 108, latest c. 56

Marcia (?) – 1 – too many moneyers of this family to determine issues

Manlia (?) – 3 – too many moneyers of this family to determine issues

RRC 335 – 9

RRC 324 – 5

Licinia (?) – 3 – too many moneyers of this family to determine issues

Junia (?) – 2 – too many moneyers of this family to determine issues

Julia (?) – 9 – too many moneyers of this family to determine issues

RRC 308 – 5

RRC 232 – 5 (Gellia, mostly certain)

Furia (?) – too many moneyers of this family to determine issues

RRC 326 – 2 (denarius, not quinarius!)

RRC 284 – 1

Fonteia (?) – 8 – too many moneyers of this family to determine issues

RRC 302 – 9

Fannia – RRC 275 or 351 or both

Fabia (?) – 15 – too many moneyers of this family to determine issues

Domitia (?) – no later than c. 115 BCE

RRC 285 – 4

Curtiatia – RRC 223 or 240 or both

RRC 218 – 2

RRC 282/2 – 4

Cornelia (?) – 9 – too many moneyers of this family to determine issues

Coelia – 7 – RRC 154 or 318 or both

Cloulia – 14 – RRC 260 or 332 or both

Claudia (?) – after c. 109 BCE

RRC 289 – 12

Cassia (?) – 3 – too many moneyers of this family to determine issues

Calpurnia (?) – 2 – too many moneyers of this family to determine issues

RRC 284 – 3

Caecilia (?) – 2 – too many moneyers of this family to determine issues

Baebia – 7 – likely RRC 236, but perhaps 133

Atilia – 2 – before c. 141 BCE

RRC 317 – 7

Antestia – 7 – either RRC 219 or 238

RRC 206 – 5

Aemilia – 7 – too many moneyers of this family to determine issues

Aelia – 7 – Before c. 92 BCE

Acilia – 2 – likely RRC 255 or 271

Aburia – 4 – RRC 244 or 250

If you just want to read the Roman stuff skip down to the next heading in bold. This post is to get me writing and I have to unburden a good deal before I get to a place where that is possible.

The Warm Up

I’m feeling exhausted and stuck. As hard as I work burning the candle at both ends it seems like I never choose the right task on which to focus my energies. I feel so incredibly grateful for my job and career and yet today I keep asking where am I going?! Why am I here? This radical mood shift from last week’s joy does have a bunch of exacerbating factors both family stuff (everyone is alive and will heal, thank god, but always a shock when the unexpected happens), and work stuff (frustration with my inability to effectively advocate for what I believe best for students).

Even in this mood shift there are wonderful things. A trip to Dublin with SUN in JANUARY and the sheer joy of the coast line and the botanical gardens and time with my beloved (Instagram, if you want visuals). Monday I got to be on stage with T. P. Wiseman, Christopher Smith, and Kathryn Tempest. We wanted an event that brought out the best of all of us and was accessible to the audience. It took a great deal of planning to chose topics that would resonate and spark conversation even disagreement without spilling over into something more adversarial in tone. It went really well: Wiseman felt honored and the tone was jovial with no fireworks. Wiseman and Smith are personal heroes of mine. Individuals whose scholarship was essential in the making of my own conception of Roman history and exposure to the range of evidence a historian may use. Being on that stage felt affirming of my career. There is a video as it was recorded but not live streamed, so I’ll post at some point as I get the link.

Last night I was even grateful for the delays on my train journey to Cambridge. I had a seat at a table and got time and space to communicate and house keep. I was then welcomed by dear old friends. Catching up felt like coming home. And yet I slept terribly tossing and turning and wishing desperately to change my flights to be in the bosom of family. The mental exhaustion is real and I know I’m watching the news too closely and giving too much energy to imagining how these global events will next intrude on the lives of those I love.

So how did I get out from under the duvet and to the point where I’m putting my thoughts in linear order and have even done a bit of bureaucratic housekeeping? I stopped doom scrolling and put on a podcast. Then I made a cup of coffee. Then I shifted rooms and podcasts. Then I made tea. Then I got dressed. Then I started asking for help.

I thought I was emotionally flat, but no! As soon as my beloved called tears started run down my face. I’m full of feelings and that itself feels like something to apologize for. And yet, that is ridiculous. I think, if I’ve learned anything from my sleepless night last night (and rough morning) is that what feels like depression can just be me spending all my energy to pretend to myself I don’t care as much as I do. So here I am on my blog giving a vaguely sanitized tell-all account because writing is the one sure way I know to control and structure my own thinking.

All words are good words.

If you’ve not read my post on tears, you might enjoy it. It is better and more engaging that this more functional exercise. Rereading that earlier post helping me welcome today’s tears and connect them to the roller coaster story of this academic year. Much of that roller coaster has been created by reactions to the events of May 8, a blog post also worth reading. Again, Rereading today that other post let me see the consistency of my own reaction and my abhorrence of any capitulation to fascism and the fear it engenders. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Silence will not produce safety for ourselves or our students. It will perpetuate the cycle of violence for the most vulnerable and I will not participate. There is a weight upon us all and it breaks my heart to learn who is willing to be complicit, or even just be silent.

The ACTUAL Post

A raw reading of part of Affresco con le Origini di Roma, da Pompei dalla Casa di Marcus Fabius Secundus (V, 4, 13), oggi al Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (inv. S.N.). Raw here means with an attempt to look with my own eyes with minimal influence from the interpretations of other scholars. This post may (or may not) become a series working through systematically the analyses of other details.

Upper left corner of the composition. Horses bodies and velificatio indicate flight as does the position of the group above the ground line on a field of dazzling blue. The figure seems to me more female than male. The body is slender the clothing perhaps plausibly read as a chiton. The hair seems to be gathered up in a bun. No car is visible and the figure seems almost be between the team of two horses who turn to look at each other wearing golden bridals. Her gaze is downward. It seems most closely related to personifications of sky phenomenon. Luna often has a biga and often velaficatio but the atmosphere seems like bright day light and there is no crescent on her forehead.

At this point my beloved called to check on me. Incredibly sweet. He also reported a conversation with the children in which they were wishing I could come home but when they learned that I was having lunch with Michael Crawford on Friday became adamant that such a meeting with such a famous scholar must take precedence. I (and my beloved) were a little surprised that they recognized the name and had been paying attention when I talked shop enough to conceptualize something about why that lunch might matter to me.

Sol seems ruled out by the lack of a radiate crown and only two horses not the standard four (quadriga) he normals drives. Also gender but I grant this is less readily confirmed. Typically, Sol is heroically nude in his chariot with a billowing drapery behind (not the arc of velaficatio), at least in the imperial period,yet on the republican coin series he is dressed. His hair typically echoes the radiate crown being almost crown like itself.

What other options are there? The first that springs to mind is Aurora. Goddess of the Dawn. Rosy-fingered in her pervasive Homeric epithet. Does she have a defined iconography?

At abour this point I decided I needed day light and food to cope. I left the flat. Huge accomplishment. A colleague called and offered moral support and did the emotional labor I needed to keep going. I then got swept up in college business, but with a sense of community and personal agency (with all its limits and fallibility). Now it after 5 pm and I’ve left the cafe where I was gently working and gone to the pub having turned off my work email for the evening. I should put my phone on do not disturb but not quite ready to let my other channels of connection go.

The British Museum has decided to label figures in bigas with either wings or velaficatio as Aurora/Eos OR Victoria/Nike. But using this to support my working hypothesis might be circular logic.

In the below Attic red figure pot Eos is clearly labelled and her horses have wings but she does not neither does she is velaficans.

The Etruscans seem happy for the dawn goddess (Thesan?) to be in the a quadriga, but note that while other figures are labelled the top figure is not. The identification is only interpretive even if probable.

Oh no! I just broke down and opened LIMC. They accepted that Augustan coin above as Aurora. Just no! There are clearly representations of Eos winged and unwinged and with her car drawn by both bigas and quadrigas and with horses both winged and unwinged.

I”m going to say that I lean toward the Aurora interpretation of the fresco detail based on eliminating other major sky gods (Sol, Luna) and because the representation is with in the scope of common Aurora iconography which itself fluxuates. Moreover her rosy garments feel fitting as does the presence of the dawn at the Dawn of Rome.

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It’s official! My team has been awarded SIX DAYS of beam time! [we run experiments 24-7 during that time, taking over night shifts in rotation] Below you’ll find the whole grant narrative. All going well we should be able to make comparisons between and within all common Roman aes grave series, and establish original ‘recipes’ for the lead heavy admixture. I’m already dreaming about how to apply this data to other votive offerings and experimental archaeology to explore casting technologies!

Stable Currency? Variable Cu:Pb:Sn Alloys and the Value of Rome’s Cast Coinages

L.M. Yarrow (ICS, SAS, London), W. Powell (CUNY), A. D. Hillier (STFC), S. Biswas (STFC), A. Inscker (Nottingham)

I. Background and Context

This cultural heritage proposal seeks to determine whether the composition of Rome’s earliest cast coinage, called aes grave (‘heavy bronze’) was an intentional and stable admixture of metals, particularly whether there was a stable ‘recipe’ within series and between series. The Romans seem to have adopted the tradition of using roughly shaped copper alloy ingots as money from northern and central Italic cultures and married this tradition to the design habits of the silver coins introduced by Greeks of southern Italy. This resulted in a perplexingly heavy cast coinage with numerous fixed denominations of an uncertain ‘bronze’ alloy or alloys. There is no definitive explanation for why they would be made so large or in so many denominations. Until recently, the prevailing scholarly view was that the heft of the objects (>300g for the largest denomination) corresponded to intrinsic value, but recent work on their metrology, pXRF surface analyses, and the results from preliminary MuX experiments (RB 2410477), make this view untenable. (1,2,3) This calls into question the origins of Roman money and by extension how we conceptualize the evolution of economic systems writ large. In essence, we’re asking if these objects were more akin to poker chips than a raw commodity.

II. Proposed Experiment

We seek to characterize the composition of the Nemi assemblage in Nottingham. Our fundamental research question is whether or not these coins were created using an intentional, controlled ‘recipe’, and if so, if it remained consistent across denominations and across series. This data allows us to test hypotheses regarding chronological sequencing and place of production. The experiment focuses on smaller denominations, allowing for multiple specimens from the same series to be compared one to another (series consistency), as well as direct denomination to denomination comparison between series (temporal/regional consistency). Smaller denominations (1/12th; 1/6th), with smaller mass and volume, are more likely to have quenched upon casting, thereby avoiding complications associated with compositional heterogeneities arising from the segregation of immiscible melts during cooling. At least two, and where possible three, examples from each series will be analyzed to test for compositional consistency. Coins from seven stylistically, and potentially temporally distinct, series will be analyzed to investigate compositional consistency interregionally and across time. Analyses will be focused at a depth of 2mm. This optimal depth avoids compositional transformations associated with weathering, but is shallow enough to remain in the compositionally homogenous quenched region, as determined from prior studies of leaded bronze at the ISIS facility(4). The material from Lord Saville’s 1880s excavations at the sanctuary of Diana at Nemi (Fig. 1) is curated by Nottingham City Museums & Galleries. Securely provenanced collections of aes grave including nearly all known series and denominations are exceptionally rare. The objects have all been previously tested using pXRF, and we can be confident in both authenticity and common conditions of ancient deposition and post-excavation storage, ensuring comparison between objects and series are valid and reasonable. Any destructive technique, such as drilling, is ruled out with respect to the cultural heritage importance of these objects. Even if seemingly similar objects are available in other collections, and even on the antiquities market we have no means (yet!) to ascertain if such objects are genuine without a clear chain of custody from the point of excavation. Forgery of such objects has been rampant since the early modern period. It would be deeply unethical to drill the only assemblage with archaeological provenance in the whole of the UK and one of only a handful globally; all the others are subject to strict protections by Italian law. We expect that the original ‘recipe’ should be consistent within series, or at least within the same denomination within a series. It may also be consistent across series, or show evolution over time. Any demonstrable difference will be historically significant in determining the economic function of the objects, and potentially, for confirming the relative chronology and relationships between the series. The sequence of creation is disputed, as is the length of time over which these objects were created and used. We theorize that the earliest were made just before the 1st Punic War (c.265BCE) and production continued through the beginnings of the 2nd Punic War (c.215 BCE). These analyses will help us better understand the socio-economic role of all bronze objects from this period, from their military applications to their status as religious offerings, including but not limited to those headline grabbing discoveries at San Casciano dei Bagni (Tuscany). At a meeting of the American Institute of Archaeology in January 2025, researchers from this site presented exceptional new discoveries from the 2024 excavations revealing that bronze votive statues bore inscriptions testifying to their weights. This religious context is not unlike what we know of the Nemi sanctuary. The heaviness of the object may have religious as well as economic significance.

Results will be calibrated through comparison with analyses of an international Pb-bronze standard (MBH-32XLB12). Based on the ISIS experiment RB2410477, we believe one analysis for each 1/12th piece is sufficient. As we lack comparanda for the larger 1/6th pieces, one reading from each side of each object ensures that we can determine if cross-denominational comparisons are valid. The assemblage contains only a single coin from series RRC25. This coin is a 1/3rd piece. An analysis at a depth of 2mm will be taken for comparison with the other series. Additional analyses will be taken at depths of 4mm, 6mm, and 8mm, to investigate potential internal inhomogeneities. This data will inform future studies in developing analytical methods for larger aes grave denominations and related artifacts.

III. Summary of Previous Beamtime or Characterization

Weathering of leaded-bronze results in a loss of Cu and a corresponding increase in concentrations of Sn and Pb in the patina. Our initial results (RB 2410477) prove that even artifacts that lack evidence of patina development (absence of O, C, S, and Cl based on pXRF analysis), exhibit large and non-systematic variance between analyses if the surface by pXRF compared to interior analyses using muonic x-rays (Fig. 2a). Thus, only internal analyses of bronze artifacts are meaningful. Our initial, exploratory experiments at ISIS suggest that the composition of aes grave vary linearly with their fractional denominations (1, 1/3rd, 1/12th) (Fig. 2b). A prior muonic x-ray study on leaded-bronze found that the compostion remains consistent within the first two millimeters, but at greater depths there is a non-linear shift in composition due to the development of immiscible melts during the cooling process (Fig. 2c) (ref). Accordingly, we conclude that these linear compositional trends at the 2mm depth across denominations is more likely to be the result of intentional ‘recipe’ modifications, rather than complications due to phase separation. RB 2410477 was critical for developing appropriate testing methods and furthered our understanding of how to use MuX to collect data from heavily leaded samples. This follow-up allows for a corresponding leap in our knowledge of this type of artifacts.

IV. Justification of Beamtime Request

Analysis of sizable Pb-Sn-bronze artifacts such as these aes grave requires a non-destructive, deep-penetrating method that can document variation in composition with depth, and position. Muon X-ray emission spectrometry, as available at ISIS on the MuX instrument, is ideal for this purpose. Invasive techniques are ruled out by ethical concerns.. Neither surface analyses, nor neutron activation can provide reliable documentary evidence of the original “recipe(s?)” again because of inconsistent internal structure of the leaded bronze admixture and the high levels of patinatation and/or environmental incrustation from the conditions of deposit. 144 hours of beam time (6 days on the MuX spectrometer) would allow characterizing an international Pb-bronze standard (MBH-32XLB12) (5 analyses at surface, 2mm, 4mm, 6mm, and 8 mm; c. 20 hours), as well as 16 cultural heritage objects (32 analyses total). These objects include (a) 7 1/12th pieces, 1 analysis each aiming to reach a depth of 2mm, c. 28 hours, (b) 6 1/6th pieces, two analyses each at 2mm, one on each side of the object, c. 40 hours, and (c) 3 1/3rd pieces, four analyses at 2mm, 4mm, 6mm, and 8 mm, c. 16 hours (d) one additional surface reading on 1 1/3rd piece. The two surface readings allow us to demonstrate pXRF data and MuX data can be accurately compared for Pb-bronze objects. Testing the smallest available denomination of each of 7 series of cast bronzes and characterize any difference within and between the series. These results will be integrated with the results of RB2410477 for publication and should allow us to confirm either an intentional recipe for the alloy across denomination and series, or instead address the historic implications of either intentional recipe adjustments or a disregard for precise metal content.

1 Baldassarri, et al. (2006). Analisi LIBS di esemplari di AES Rude… Cong. Naz. di Archeometria IV, 561-573.
2 Ingo et al. (2005). Microchemical investigation of archaeological copper… . Microchimica Acta 144, 87-95.
3 Yarrow. (2023). Strangeness of Rome’s Early Heavy Bronze Coinage. In Making the Middle Republic, 103-31.
4 Cataldo et al. (2022). A novel non-destructive technique for cultural heritage … negative muons. App. Sci., 12, 4237

Please congratulate me for resisting naming this blog “something, something Wednesday” and thus making it even harder to resist such a title tomorrow.

After lunch yesterday I got to reflecting on what intellectual work I was really itching to do. I almost wrote an extension of that morning’s post on myth but with a focus on how I read fragmentary texts, ancient cultures of citation, and my general philosophy of historiography. I decided, while that might be a fun writing exercise, I’m already on record with a great deal of this. Not just my 2006 book, but also my 2018 Diodorus article and my forthcoming piece on Dionysius in the CUP volume Making Sense of Monarchy (link to my publications). It didn’t feel like a good use of LIBRARY time. I’m enjoying the gift of research time, but I’m so out of the habit of being in research libraries I forget to indulge in the books themselves. There is also voice in my head that says that writing and focusing on publication goals is more ‘productive’ than exposing myself to new things. That might be true to a point, but a good deal of the joy of being specifically here at ICS are the BOOKS, specifically the major catalogues and reference works.

Meet the Corpus of Etruscan Mirrors, or officially Corpus Speculorum Etruscorum,

Ok so it is no SNG in scale of series but it is a monster of a late 20th century project, one of those like LIMC that I’d love see fully digitized, updated, and continued. It is massive but more mirrors do exist outside this standard reference work.

I decided that I didn’t feel confident in talking about the Bolsena mirror with wolf and twins because while I love the genre of Etruscan mirrors I’ve never made a systematic review of them, just oooo-ed and aaaah-ed as I went along. Think of it like how your perspective changes on a coin when you sit down and work through trays upon trays of coins within a given series. Or how great it is just to go through Schaefer’s Archive or the CRRO examples to see the range of renderings. It’s the type of visual expertise I pride myself upon and continually seek to develop and refine.

I sat at my desk thinking, What do I need to know to talk about this iconography? How can I determine what the composition is likely to mean? What features are typical? What are unusual? Do comparanda exist for individual elements in the composition? Can they offer clues to support interpretations?

Whelp. I did it. Looked at every mirror in CSE and will do it again if I ever want to publish any of this. I took snapshots as I went of things that felt potentially relevant, but as so often I’d approach the survey of the evidence differently if I knew then what I know now. On my next pass I want to quantify (1) how many of each border type including nature of the border, intrusion of design over border, any lines defining the borders (2) number of figures in composition (3) nudity vs types of costume (4) depiction of landscape and/or interior space (5) animals depicted (6) facial hair (7) veiling (8) presence or absence of negative space (9) figures peeking over or around inanimate objects (10) genre of subject matter. All of that would allow me to be more absolute in the following observations, but as I didn’t count specifics I’m going to just narrate my general impressions of what I saw.

By far and away the most common composition is two figures with Phrygian caps and boot (often in knee length costume belted high on the chest) looking at each other typically with a star or dots between. After this most figural mirrors had either a two figure, three figure, or four figure compositional layout. Most figures stand but those closest to the outside of the design tend to curve/bend towards the more central space/figure(s). Reclining figures are rare. When four figures are present there is often a temple visible above their heads. Nudity is the most typical costume and the vast majority of figures are depicted as youthful. Facial hair is reserved for old men (kings?), a few wild men and paternal gods like Jupiter. Babies and Elders are rarely depicted. Animals rarely take up much of the compositional space excepting sometimes horses and the occasional hunting dog. When women are heavily draped their faces tend to be covered. The vast majority of subjects are drawn from what we might call Greek myth rather than Italic. Certain subjects repeat (Pelius and Thetis, Many Aphrodite scenes, Birth of Athena, Helen’s Egg, Hercules and Mercury).

All and all I’m left with the impression that the Bolsena mirror is bizarrely exceptional. I could find zero parallels for certain elements. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but it does mean they are unlikely to be common. I saw no bare trees. I saw no wolfs. I saw no lions that broke the fourth wall staring out at the viewer. I saw no women with fans or even fans as a compositional attribute in domestic ‘toilet’ scenes. I saw no figure in the same short tunic as the figure on the right hand of the composition.

The Bolsena mirror feels familiar from my work on coins and intaglios, even lamps, but most mirrors do not feel this way. It is as if the vast majority of mirrors derive from a different stylistic approach to filling a circular compositional space. It also feels very Italic the same way much Etruscan tomb painting does but I’m thinking of especially the Tomba François or even some Bronze Cista (such as are associated with Praeneste, but also manufactured at Rome). Typically the Etruscan mirrors remind me more of the tondos of Kylixes if they connect to anything besides their own well-defined traditions.

What follows are images I collected along my survey of CSE that I thought might be relevant. While there are a great deal of images here, I’m most struck by how none are a great parallel and that there really are not that many given the large number of images in the whole corpus. I don’t like arguments from silence and I don’t like trying to argue a negative conclusion, but the wolf and twins mirror is exceptional and really very different from other examples. I don’t know why and I don’t want to speculate, yet.

Next step, figure out bit more of how the Bolsena mirror came to light. So many of these mirrors don’t have secure find spots…

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Later the same day.

So I’ve now tackled the publication that rehabilitated the mirror. I am glad I retained my habit of prioritizing my own investigation of the primary evidence prior to reading it through the lens of secondary scholarship.

I find myself not at all startled that the mirror had long been considered a fake and that it was only in 1982 that it was rehabilitated. The reading is adept and the images show clearly that the rendering of the certain details have strong parallels from mirrors associated with Praeneste. These details however are stylistic, rather than iconographic, comparisons. The Lion’s face is compared to that of Papa Silenus type figures, Mercury in 3/4 profile has strong parallels, one of which is a feminine face. The drapery of the right-hand figure, the so-called Quirinus figure, has parallels with drapery of a female figure. The centaur parallel offered for the face and hair of the left-hand figure (“Faunus”) is equally strong. I think the question remains:do these parallels amount to authentication? Praeneste is certainly a place where we know cista with more Italic themes were made. If the mirror is genuine, I would believe the attribution. It still gives me deep pause that there are so few parallels for iconographic similarities for similar figures, for all the stylistic comparisons seem potentially valid. I would really, really like to have this mirror sent for compositional analysis along side some of the stylistic parallels offered in the article or better yet some mirrors excavated more recently at Praeneste with secure context.

The mirror is said to have been sold to Alessandro Castellani in Florence in 1877, the Bolsena origin was part of the object origin story. No excavator. No more specific find details. As the Castellani Wikipedia page says

It has been hypothesized that some Etruscan finds traded by Castellani were fake.

The citations attached to this quotation:

Simpson, Elizabeth (2005). “Una perfetta imitazione del lavoro antico”, Gioielleria antica e adattamenti Castellani. In: I Castellani e l’oreficeria archeologica italiana. L’Erma di Bretschneider. pp. 177–200. ISBN88-8265-354-4.

Edilberto Formigli, Wolf-Dieter Heilmeyer (1993). «Einige Faelschungen antiken Goldschmucks im 19. Jahrhundert», Archaeologischer Anzeiger (in German). pp. 299–332.

Here is a link to the forgeries he sold to the British Museum. Most came with so-called find spots.

If Castellani gave it away, rather than selling it, I wonder if he himself had doubts about it… There were few of his generation better able to judge genuine vs a good fake vs a bad fake. But this is only speculation. We need more data preferable metallurgical.

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Reclining figure

Infants

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I find it fascinating that thus far it seems female infants are shown tightly wrapped while male infants are nude.

Beards

Notice that genitals are typically covered for bearded males unless they are gods or depicted enraged. They mostly have staves and bare chests with a toga like garment.

seated

standing

active

“wild” men

Veil

Floral motif

One of the only parts of the Bolsena wolf and twins mirror that feels deeply like other known mirrors is the ivy border growing out of a flower motif and the way the figures intrude into that border.

Wingless Travelling Hats