Prizes

The prize crowns and palms on a table will be familiar to numismatists familiar with Roman provincial coinage (relevant results from RPC Online).

The bags of money are less common. Even more tantalizing is the writing on the bags. The line above multiplies the number by 1000. X with a horizontal line is regularly used as the symbol for the denarius on Diocletian’s price edict in both Latin and Greek versions and comes before the numeral. The edict is roughly the same date as the mosaics.

The lower case d with a line a the top is another figure I don’t immediately recognize. A puzzle for tomorrow, but one I feel sure will make me slap my forehead as soon as see the answer.

The unit of account for Diocletian’s Price Edict was the denarius, not the ‘denarius communis’ a fiction (not unlike the so-called aes signatum). See Jones 2017 who demonstrates the term was created by Lépaulle in 1888. In fact even the name of the Edict is a 19th century creation:

I find myself again wanting to read more MHC:

Michael Crawford, Diocletian’s edict of maximum prices at the Civil Basilica in Aphrodisias. Aphrodisias, 13. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2023. Pp. 260. ISBN 9783752006858. (BMCR review)

On ILL order:

Burnett, Charles, ‘The Palaeography of Numerals’, in Frank T. Coulson, and Robert G. Babcock (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography (2020; online edn, Oxford Academic, 10 Nov. 2020), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195336948.013.96,

Now, I really should put in some pictures of coins.

In both the coins above we see the motif of five circles usually described as apples but I do wonder if that if a firm attestation or if they might be coins. We also see in the second of the two, the one with only one crown, a small purse on the table next to the crown. Or so it is traditionally identified. On the specimen below you can see two purses looking more like purses under the table flanking the prize vase.

Why does teaching prep have to be so distracting?!