adventures in my head
So in the last blog post I complained about not having enough context, but sometimes context doesn’t help, but rather confounds. The following tessera is from Agrigento and we even know the niche in the wall of a house into which it seems to have been intentionally deposited (as a ritual object? perhaps repurposed?!). Full… Continue reading Tesserae with Context
I’m reading this and boy is it at once exciting and frustrating… Pedroni, Luigi, and Guido Devoto. “TESSERE DA UNA COLLEZIONE PRIVATA.” Archeologia Classica 47 (1995): 161–201. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44367457. This object has no listed provenience. It is made of bone. Is it even ancient? I know of no close parallels. If it were sitting in the… Continue reading Sabinus’ Tessera
If you’ve read more of this blog than is probably good for your health, you might remember me wondering previously about the possibility that some of our tesserae that are usually attributed to bankers might actually be part of mint operations and the batch control system. I came back to that idea when was… Continue reading Tessera Nummularia and Control Marks
This isn’t a new thought, but it is perhaps an under thought, thought. We know the the republican calendar was all kinds of F-ed up. Hence the Julian Calendar, on which see Feeney who gloriously side steps the question: Typically intercalary months were every other year. 52 had been intercalary, hence the fear that 50… Continue reading Politics of Intercalation
I’m cheating on my extensive administrative responsibilities and teaching duties because my brain is obsessed with these tessera nummularia (see previous post to watch the development of my interest from a few random specimens in the louvre to an all out compulsion) In many ways this is the most important one: “Anchialus, enslaved by Lucius… Continue reading Payment Verification?
“Philodamus, enslaved by Junius, inspected [this] seven days before the Ides of April in the consulship of Publius Lentulus and Gnaeus Orestes” Louvre earlier posts on tessera nummularia Addendum. 61 CE typically these tessera are dated to the republican era but they do continue later. I cannot read the date but everything else is clear:… Continue reading 71 BCE
RRC 348/6 So why am I writing this blog post instead of editing and revising the article that is due Monday and the very reason I’m ignoring my children on this first full day of their fall break?! Well, It’s because of what Crawford and Wiseman said in 1964: The idea that the iconography is… Continue reading Dossenus and the “Plague” of 87 BCE
My favorite detail of the attributes of Liberalitas is her money shovel. Sometimes its called an abacus (wrong) or accounting board (a plausible, but potentially misleading term). This tool was used to ensure each individual got the same number of coins in distributions of imperial largesse. On the Arch of Constantine you can see the… Continue reading 93 of 234 days: Liberalitas and the gens Thoria
Crawford tells us that “A collection of photos donated by Lord Savile to the British Museum illustrates a number of pieces not otherwise attested, which have been included in the list below, and there may well have been more. (The photos also illustrate four tesserae: Standing figure/Standing figure, Standing figure/Standing figure, IVVEN/Blank, COR/THAL /Triple Hecate)… Continue reading 2 of 234 days: Nemi and More
53-52 BCE is a scary year for Rome. Violence meant elections weren’t held. Pompey took on a sole consulship and for a time it looked like that was the end of the principle of collegiality in the highest magistracies. It’s hard to imagine what living through that was like. One window is offered by perhaps… Continue reading The Constitutional Crisis of 52 BCE
Liv Mariah Yarrow 