So I’m reading my Polybius and I’m sorely curious to read up on the culture of Hellenistic diplomatic gifts.    There are Hellenistic states and kings sending vastly expensive “crowns” to Rome when making diplomatic requests (Just two examples: 30.4.5 & 31.32.3).  The value is invariable given in terms of number of pieces of gold (10,000 or 20,000 are common enough).   What the heck did these gifts  look like?  Are they really crowns?  Like this sort of thing but much heavier?

Or is it just called a “crown” but its actually bullion in one form or another.  Did the form or name of the gift have religious connotations, as well as agonistic connotations?  Maybe we can’t separate religion out from agonistic themes in the ancient world (think Olympic Games honoring Zeus).

Victory crowns are a very common as a design element on Hellenistic and Republican Coinage (see above).

And then there is the great passage of Polybius where the Romans send back an ivory (curule?) chair and scepter as part of the diplomatic exchange in which they’re given a crown.   Here we clearly have expensive gifts, but where the value is in their symbolic potency.

Much later, here is the Genius of the Roman People being crowned while seated in a curule chair holding a scepter.

Here’s a curule chair with a wreath/crown (no scepter that’s a lituus, i.e. a priestly instrument).

Is that a wreath sitting on this curule chair?

No such note in RRC, but it seems pretty likely, especially after seeing these later types:

Chair and Crowns/Wreaths rather seem to go together!  Also, check out those Elvis sideburns on Octavian (the future Augustus)!

Okay back to Polybius and absolutely no checking up on the scholarship on all this while I’ve got a book review to work on.

I was correcting proofs for a chapter in an edited volume and found a reference to a coin type I couldn’t perfectly remember. So I thought I’d remind myself why I thought it so relevant. I stuck in the key words ‘Agathocles’ and ‘lion’ into the ANS database, meaning to return coins from Syracuse, but in my search up pops this Greco-Bactrian specimen. Much of this king’s coinage looks very much like that of any of Alexander’s successors, but some of it, like this piece borrows from Indian traditions, both Buddhist and Hindu. I’ve not fact checked the Wikipedia entry, but it gives some idea of how rich the cultural connections may be. A quick look at the academic material reveals how complex Greco-Bactrian Numismatics is. It’s interesting to think that it dates within a decade or so of other coins reflecting (perhaps less drastic) cultural intersections brought about by the rise of previous peripheral states in the Hellenistic world:

[Images fixed 10-19-2026. Text left the same. A unit on Bactria created by my students.]

I spent an hour or so this morning re-reading how different scholars narrate the beginning of Roman coinage.  I am most taken with Burnett’s narrative style, especially when he’s writing for a non specialist audience.  He owns the complexity but makes that complexity seem comprehensible by being brave enough to generalize and discuss the controversies in big brush strokes.  He owns his own options and gives a direct assessment of where he thinks the balance of scholarship is leaning.   There is a mildness in tone which allows the possibility that alternative view might prevail.   Shades of gray, but not pea soup opaque.  I really enjoyed his clear distinction between ramo secco and aes signatum.  Weight standard, design variation, metallurgical content, and find spots are all key.  And, yet they clearly can co exist in the same monetary system as they are hoarded together.

On critical addition seems to me to be that the Roman currency bars, even if on a weight standard, were often treated as bullion, like the ramo secco.

The design and weight standard aren’t ‘respected’ by those using the money. The use of bronze currency bars (esp. ramo secco) in Etruria and Emilia goes back at least until the 6th century BC.  The Romans didn’t start making their aes signatum until probably the 3rd century (280-255BC ish).  This is actually a little later than when we think they may have been making their first tentative forays into struck coinage.

This is probably the first Roman coin and it was probably made in Neapolis (modern Naples) c. 320 perhaps as early as 326.  It looks just like the Neapolitan coins of the time, but has the legend RΩΜΑΙΩΝ (notice the use of Greek not Latin).   It’s a bronze alloy.  The next up is this silver beauty which might be as early as 300BC:

[I’m skipping over all the dating controversies and iconographic issues and historical context.]

My main point is just that its possible that the urge  instinct to standardize the weights and to add “obverse” and “reverse” designs to the currency bars may be influenced by the early forays into struck coinage.  They may be evidence of a change attitude towards what money should look like.

We need to guard against assumptions about what is more or less primitive and how societies should develop.  The story of money at Rome is one of comfortable(?) code switching between different socio-cultural systems through at least the 1st Punic war if not longer.