It is super weird to me that I’ve never written a blog post about this coin, at least not one the search function on my blog will spit out. I’ve been posting for 13 years and this very common coin has not yet crossed my desk in a way that generated a post. I tried to bribe my kids to make an index of my blog based on Crawford numbers over the summer. They are to rich to be interested in the copy and pasting work at the rates I offered. Maybe I’ll find someone else I can pay to do that for me at some point. It would be interesting to see the other gaps.
I didn’t even illustrate it in my 2021 book. That was probably a mistake. Perhaps there will be a second edition in which I can correct it. I’d slip it into chapter 3 on Mutinies to talk about the impact of Spartacus’ revolt and to thus contextualize the Social War.
Here’s what Lockyear 2007: 159 says that inspired this post:
You see those two little lines in the marginalia. That tells you I had this thought when I read the book cover to cover at some point before I started this blog. This is the sort of little nugget that has such a hard time being translated from technical publications into the mainstream of historical research.
I did however annotate my hard copy of RRC with Lockyear’s insights. On p. 164 he connects it to Pompey’s threatened return from Spain for lack of funds, but notes p. 166 that it was not distributed to Spain in any significant numbers.
If we put it in 73 BCE as part of the regularly striking for the year we need not be surprised that more coins were struck this year. There were multiple stressors that year among those not already mentioned Mithridates agitation in Asia.
Crawford rightly points to the use of Diana on other Postumii issues (RRC 335 and 372).
I will therefore reply first to Postumus, who somehow or other, though only a candidate for the praetorship, seems to me in his assault on a consul like a circus-horse competing in the four-horse-chariot race. In his case, if his rivals did nothing wrong, his retirement from the contest showed a sense of their superiority ; if on the other hand any of them spent money on the contest, Postumus must be a very desirable friend, to be following up an injury to a friend before resenting one received by himself.
Cic. Mur. 57
if one of the counsel for the prosecution, our friend Postumus, went to welcome Murena with quite a large number of supporters, is there anything to cause astonishment in that huge crowd ? I say nothing of his clients, neighbours, and fellow-tribesmen, or of the whole army of Lucullus, which had arrived about that time to attend the triumph : I merely assert this, that the voluntary service of giving a man an imposing reception has never failed to be rendered to any man who deserved it, nor even to any one who desired it.
Ibid. 69
I am more concerned than Crawford about how to resolve the AT/TA ligature. We resolve it elsewhere on the series as Tatius. I’ve got no better answer for its appearance on this coin. One cannot turn the ligature into a version of Albinus as far as I can see.
Finally I’d note the hunting spear has clear dots along the shaft. An unusual feature to my eye.
Liv Mariah Yarrow 