So Crawford’s listing of the contents this hoard in CHRR doesn’t emphasize enough that it was incomplete.
Notice here in Cesano 1942, her point no. 3: large rectangular pieces of bronze were removed by unknown passing workers and could not be retrieved by E. Cocozza. This strongly suggests that Roman Currency Bars (so-called aes signatum) were part of this deposit.
This reminded me that Ardea was on the list of findspots known to Garrucci in 1882 from the same cache?! (early post on this)
The other key point, no. 5: the find was associated with tufa blocks and “among the earth there are fragments of Etruscan Campanian pottery, and of roof tiles, elements that hint at a place inhabited in the republican period” I wonder if any field survey or excavation has been done in this area?!
The recovered materials from this hoard are on deposit in Rome and were published with full illustrations by Catalli 1989 in BN 13 (on file).
One of the most interesting aspects of this hoard is the presence of RRC 16/1 which must share a similar date to the earliest aes grave [RRC 14, RRC 18, RRC 19] also in this hoard. This hoard would have been excellent support as well for my dating of the currency bars in my #NotAllElephants article from 2021 (formatted full text). Drat.
Image from Catalli 1989
I’m also intrigued by role of Opera Nazionale Combattenti in bringing this to light. I can find plenty on their activities but nothing easily about the Romanians or veterans returning form Romania?
In the original 1969 publication of CHRR Crawford says “There is no good reason for regarding this hoard as a votive deposit.”
In 2003 re revised his views, but still did not commit himself to believing it was a votive deposit:
This question is of some interest to me as I’d be curious if it meant all these objects were actually in circulation together or had a long period of sequential deposit. But the main issue is that I failed to include this in my #NotAllElephants article from 2021 (formatted full text). It doesn’t change my argument in the slightest but it makes my maps and tables incomplete and that bugs the heck out of me!
The hoard contained 6 fragments of Roman currency bars (so called aes signatum):
“Another roughly triangular fragment, with an undulating fracture line that runs along two of the three sides of the piece; which presents in relief on the two wide faces a wavy line in relief which could also be or rather hint at one of the stylized floral ornaments of the lightning clasped in the claws of the eagle, of the quadrilateral EAGLE-PEGASUS (3) while, on the other face nothing can be identified. Weight gr. 72; cm. 4 X 2.6o X 1.30 thick.”
“An almost shapeless triangular fragment where it is difficult but certainly possible to recognize traces of the feet of the bull appearing on the two sides of the relative BULL-BULL quadrilateral (2). Weight gr. 58; cm. 3.6o x 2.50 x 1.10 thick.” (Machine translations)
Cesano not only talks about the coins but also gives weight details for the Aes Rude that make up the largest category in the deposit:
One weird thing is the gap in this find between currency bars and the next Roman coinage which starts with the prow series libral standard aes grave. Was there a gap in deposition during this time?
I wanted to think about weights of the aes rude as a counter point for the currency bar fragments so I made some charts:
However, we shouldn’t just think about weight but also size, as Cesano says:
“The pieces are of two types, compact and heavy bronze and lighter spongy slag, whereby the weight is not indicated by the volume of the pieces themselves.” {machine translation}
The images and above quotes are from Cesano 1942 with a lovely colleague just sent me.
Original post below. I write these as I dive in an I like to preserve my train of thought. And, then sometimes post publication new stuff is shared with me by generous colleagues, like Seth Bernard. Who found that Crawford has tracked down records of this hoard in 2003, AND had seen another more recent one that was then unpublished and so leaving yet another content list to track down.
What I don’t understand is why Crawford assumes these are denarii… or that the asses are of the struck variety rather than the cast. I don’t see anything in the Latin to confirm that summary. The epigraphic evidence would suggest 1st Punic War date at least to my untrained eye….
The meat of this article is really the appendices just masses of data on where coins were found.
This is not the post I started writing this morning. That one may appear later today or whenever it is finished, it’s on more aes grave bibliography I was reading. This is a side note…
I went looking for images/info on Mater Matuta to round out my understanding of a findcontext and landed on this Arachne search result and as I read I found a hoard report from a completely different part of the early Roman Italy!
Extremely frustratingly I can’t find the inscription (yet!) in any of the typical epigraphic databases (I tend to start with Clauss/Slaby) and that seems supremely odd as it is clearly published. I also checked Coin Hoards and came up with zilch. My thought is if I can find a better publication of the inscription I might find the coin types. The next stop was to figure out what type of quaestors are making this offering: fines officers!
This got me to an article I’ve now ILL requested:
Piacentin, Sofia. 2021. “Public Fines in Italy Outside Rome.” In Financial Penalties in the Roman Republic, pp. 60-76. Brill.
But! The publisher’s preview gave me a head start:
Turns out Marengo is a PROLIFIC epigrapher with numerous interesting publications that I am studiously not letting myself consider reading at this time. This is the relevant one for the above inscription:
Marengo, Silvia Maria. “Le « multae ».” In Il capitolo delle entrate nelle finanze municipali in Occidente ed in Oriente: actes de la Xe rencontre franco-italienne sur l’épigraphie du monde romain : Rome, 27-29 mai 1996,. Collection de l’École Française de Rome; 256, 73-84. Roma: Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, 1999. Which gloriously turns out to be open access!
The above inscription with the coin hoard is her no. 2:
Which with this transcription let me get the databases to spit it out:
Still no more information on the hoard…. I guess I’ll have to track down all the publications at some point…
I did however let me try to retrieve it the plaque from Gallica (BnF image database). Picenum, Firmum, and Fermo, gave me nothing relevant, neither did ‘inscription’, but that last search term did return a whole host of yummy images, especially of the fragments of the tablette ilaques.
Location of Firmum Picenum (mod. Fermo)
It was a long standing iron age settlement but made a Latin Colony c. 264 BCE (Vel. Pat. 1.14.8), and then sided with Hannibal… We can assume a deposition of this hoard was mid third century based on letter forms and history of the colony.
The development of the quaestorship in the third century has been a hot topic, furthered by the discovery of the Egadi Rams. I’m not sure yet how the use of the title in colonies intersects. I’ve not read enough. Here’s some starter bibliography…
Prag Jonathan R. W. The quaestorship in the third and second centuries BC. In: L’imperium Romanum en perspective. Les savoirs d’empire dans la République romaine et leur héritage dans l’Europe médiévale et moderne. Besançon : Institut des Sciences et Techniques de l’Antiquité, 2014. pp. 193-209. (Collection « ISTA », 1302) (open access – the whole volume is fascinating!)
Prag, J. (2014). Bronze rostra from the Egadi Islands off NW Sicily: The Latin inscriptions. Journal of Roman Archaeology,27, 33-59. doi:10.1017/S1047759414001159
Prag, Jonathan R. W. “A Revised Edition of the Latin Inscription on the Egadi 11 Bronze ‘Rostrum’ from the Egadi Islands.” Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik 202 (2017): 287–92. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26603819.
Pina Polo, Francisco and Díaz Fernández, Alejandro. “Chapter 2: The development of the quaestorship and the so-called Italian quaestors”. The Quaestorship in the Roman Republic, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2019, pp. 25-50. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110666410-004 (again the whole volume is super relevant)
Today
Lafayette reply
Review grad student apps by Jan 19
Finalize LETTER draft
Read more on Aes Grave
Circle back to department about any Jan planning meetings
Not Today (but maybe tomorrow, or the day after)
post conference Rome accommodation
Teaching requests for Fall 2023
Set time table for any collaborative RRDP work/publication prep that needs to happen this semester: Chicago pub, INC pub, collaboration with RACOM, etc…
Circle back to Capito project
Consider ask for funding from Dean’s office
Begin Med school rec letter
record mini myth
find out what is on that v old harddrive and back up to cloud
“When I mapped findspots for #NotAllElephants I used “Find spots taken from Vecchi 2014, pp. 29-31 with the addition of Lavinium, Sutri, Viterbo, and the region north of Naples.”
I’m worried I might have missed the following find spots from Garrucci’s list, but they could be listed in Vecchi under another place name!
Ardea (area of the Rutules)
Tarquinii
Fabbro near Orvieto
Fiesole
Now if I’d mapped in Google Earth this would be much more simple to reconstruct and check. Doh. I’m going to leave the question for today, but definitely want to circle back and follow up.
I was collecting bibliography yesterday and was impressed with the running theme of specimens found outside Italy. The Croatian finds don’t surprise me too much because of the Mazin hoard with its roman currency bar fragments (so called aes signatum, see #NotAllElephants). I’d tentatively relate the fragmentary nature of the find in Switzerland to a similar phenomenon. Martínez Chico is right to emphasize the military camp finds at La Palma from the Prow series and events of 2nd Punic War to explain eastern Iberian find patterns and I’d transfer that logic to all the yellow dots in Sicily. The green dots (series 14 and 18) on the Sicilian eastern coast remind me of the patterns noted by Jaia and Molinari 2011, i.e. the association of these early series with the fortification of the Tyrrhenian seacoast line.
The nice thing with building this sort of representation in Google Earth is I can keep adding to it as I come across more references.
ILL still hasn’t given up any treasures as of yet.
The other thing from this morning of note is that the Portuguese variant of RRC 18/1 has Apollo facing left on both sides. I’m concerned however that I don’t understand Martínez Chico assertion that there are two already known variants, A and B. As far as I can tell this is just about the photographer’s choice, but maybe I’m being dense….
It is demoralizing to see the same things on my to do list as yesterday. It isn’t that I didn’t do any of the things, I touched them all. It’s just they all need to be touched again. As is the nature of the work. Progress is the key.
Today
First steps on Aes Grave project – collect more bibliography
More Italy visit logistics
More AAH logistics
Book flights
More BM communications
Schaefer follow up
follow up with Lafayette
Not Today (but maybe tomorrow, or the day after)
Teaching requests for Fall 2023
Circle back to department about any Jan planning meetings
Set time table for any collaborative RRDP work/publication prep that needs to happen this semester: Chicago pub, INC pub, collaboration with RACOM, etc…
Circle back to Capito project
Consider ask for funding from Dean’s office
Begin Med school rec letter
record mini myth
find out what is on that v old harddrive and back up to cloud
Balbi de Caro 1993; all specimens in this volume including this one of RRC 41/1 are from the Medagliere Museo Nazionale Romano di Roma
The piercing here is fascinating as the piece weights far too much to be worn as a comfortable ornamental piece of jewelry (almost 2.5 pounds!). I wonder if it was intended for a dedication, say being nailed to the wall of a sanctuary or something similar.
These two little videos show how closely both the obverse and reverse of the Rome specimen and the BM specimen match. I’ve never seen two aes grave this close. Traditional wisdom is that molds were not re used, but perhaps this is evidence otherwise? Or could one or both be an imitation?!
The nose, chin, and overall profile have been aligned but notice the X behind the head cannot be alignedHere I’ve got the X to align and the helmet curve sort of aligns but the profile is now significantly off.
There is one more specimen in trade but it is SO stylistically different from the BM/Roma one’s I don’t know what to think. The reverse bears passing resemblance to the Gnecchi reverse.
—
Other amusements
Aestimata poena ab antiquis ab aere dicta est, qui eam aestimaverunt aere, ovem decussis, bovem centussis, hoc est decem vel centum assibus.
Festus (epitome Pauli), sv. aestimata
Penalties in ancient times are said to be measured in bronze; they valued these in bronze, a sheep a decussis, a cow centussis, that is 10 or 100 asses.
a rough translation of my own
A completely fanciful and wrong approach to Italic weights and measures, but perhaps of amusement (link).
Days 5-6 were the weekend. And, now that I have a family, I have a better appreciation of the need to stop oneself from working every possible moment.
Grueber 1910 (see last post) cited Borasi 1898 and it is indeed it not only has a very nice sketch/transcription of the stone, but also a discussion of the earlier speculations on the coin including background to the historical dating of it and a little on what was known then on the cult of Bellona in the region. Perhaps fuel for deeper digging
Borasi and others keep mentioning a hybrid type with Augustus and RRC 486/1 and the legend “imp. Caes. Augus, tr. pot. iix.” as reported by Borghesi. I wondered if any of these hybrids have turned up more recently. I’ve not tracked one down yet, but I did come across TWO fun Spanish hybrid types using the obverse of RRC 407/2 and the reverse of RIC 1 404 (or 405). Kind of wild they use different dies but from the same types.
Not my most satisfying warm up writing, but good enough… on to the lists.
Today
Spend EVEN MORE time with Dionysius
More Italy visit logistics
More Rutgers coordination as needed
More Princeton coordination as needed
Dr. Liz letter
Not Today (but maybe tomorrow, or the day after)
Teaching requests for Fall 2023
Circle back to department about any Jan planning meetings
Book flights
Set time table for any collaborative RRDP work/publication prep that needs to happen this semester: Chicago pub, INC pub, collaboration with RACOM, etc…
Circle back to Capito project
Consider ask for funding from Dean’s office
Begin Med school rec letter
record mini myth
find out what is on that v old harddrive and back up to cloud
Grueber 1910 (repr. 1970): 569-570 has deliciously erudite footnotes! And yet, like so often he doesn’t explain the theories he’s dismissing. I know they are wrong and so does he, but what a lot of work to make others dig through. It makes me slightly more fond of Crawford’s dismissive asides as he condemns his predecessors. at least I know where he stands and where to look.
I use the 1970 reprint of Grueber as Crawford had a hand in its re issue and correction of errors of the 1910 edition, but if you don’t have it on your shelves or happen to be in need of it away from home, there is a digitized version of the original BMCRR.
Next time I am in Rome I must make a pilgrimage to this inscription in the baths of Diocletian in the section on oriental cults! Strange to think I must have walked by it half a dozen times in the past but not noticed its numismatic connection.
What does it mean? At first reading, It seems to be that this guy Eros wanted to make a dedication to Bellona and needed Accoleius and his colleague’s permission to do so. Our moneyer’s name is in the last line. Also notice the TALL Is which Grueber discusses as a means of indicating the long vowel sound. The stone itself is from Lanuvium.
Also of note for our current assumptions that this coin represents the cult image at Nemi, is that at two members of the same gens as the moneyer are attested at finds from the sanctuary at Nemi. One clearly played some role in local politics in the early first century CE. AND wait for it… our own dear Lord Savile scooped up this v stone (along with the vast majority of the coin finds from the excavations) and brought it to Nottingham! (I’ll be sure to pay my respects when I visit.)
The other attestation is from a list of names of uncertain function (see line five).
The Lanuvium makes sense once we look at the maps. Lanuvium is only about an hour and 20 minute walk away, and is the next nearest ancient community to the sanctuary after Ariccia.
There is only one instance of gens in epigraphy from Rome itself and that seems to have been a funerary inscription that was reused in the construction of the walls of the tomb of Caecilia Metella
Right. More to learned and share here obviously, but I’m done warming up, and am ready to tackle the to do list!
Today
Submit Signed Tow by 5 pm Jan 6
Spend MORE time with Dionysius
Contact more curators about feasibility of collections visits concurrent with this trip (progress)
BM/Rowan Follow Up
Rutgers Follow Up
Enter Dates of things in Family Calendar to avoid nasty surprises
Circle back to department about any Jan planning meetings
Book flights
Set time table for any collaborative RRDP work/publication prep that needs to happen this semester: Chicago pub, INC pub, collaboration with RACOM, etc…
Circle back to Capito project
Consider ask for funding from Dean’s office
Begin Med school rec letter
record mini myth
find out what is on that v old harddrive and back up to cloud
From Schaefer’s Archives (presumed forger’s die, now in Zurich money museum (see previous blog post)Röm. Republik: P. Accoleius Lariscolus Berlin 18202033 = 1882 Sandes = RRC Nr. 486,1 (datiert 43 v. Chr.); B. Woytek, Arma et Nummi. Forschungen zur römischen Finanzgeschichte und Münzprägung der Jahre 49 bis 42 v. Chr. (2003) 445-448. 558 (41 v. Chr.).
I love that I can use the Berlin catalogue as a digital index for Woytek. The pages here discuss the college of moneyers and why 41 BCE is a better date for them. It does not engage with typology, but rather mint structure.
Smyth 1856: 2 describes two specimens of RRC 486/1. He discounts an unattributed description of as the Caryatidae, and favors seeing it as the metamorphosis of the three Clymenidae, sisters of Phaeton, with the obverse being their mother, Clymene. He quotes in Latin a line from Havercamp. The view is over a hundred years old by the time Smyth paraphrases. AGNETHLER 1746: 72-73 (next set of images) makes explicit what Smyth only implies. The attraction of this interpretation is based on the moneyer’s cognomen LARISCOLUS being derived from larix: the larch tree. The idea was that the three figures are turning into these trees. Smyth rejects an idea he attributes to Cavedoni that the obverse represents Acca Laurentia and that the money is thereby associating he gens, ACCOLEIUS, with the mother of the Lares and more over implying a connection between his cognomen and these protective deities.
Public domain image of a European Larch
Given the conviction of all these forebearers, I found myself surprised no one had pointed me to an ancient account of this myth. I had hope when I turned to Rasche 1785 when he gave a Pliny reference…
But NO! that passage is about the triple nature of the larch, a rather clever means of creating a connection, I admit.
“the fir and the larch divide the process into three parts and produce their buds in three batches; consequently they also shed scales of bark three times…”
So what’s up? Well, outside of the numismatic bubble these sisters are typically called Heliades (a small point, but helpful for tracking down info!) and all of the accounts (as far as I can tell) have them turning into poplar trees if any type of tree is specified. Also their number isn’t fixed, as many as seven appear in some accounts (three is also a known number).
So how and when did our former colleagues reject this interpretation and land on the Diana as worshiped at Nemi…? A story for another day. This was enough of a pleasant warm up exercise and now onto the to-do list.
Today
Finalize Tow Proposal (DUE Friday, Jan 6, 5 pm)
Spend sometime with Dionysius
Send Letter of Recommendation (RE grad teaching)
Triage former student emails from over break
Contact more curators about feasibility of collections visits concurrent with this trip (progress!)
Contact Princeton and Rutgers about possibility of visits
Write BM about whether scans of Nemi photos can be had
Write Clare in case she’s seen these photos and is interested in those token images mentioned by Crawford
Not Today (but maybe tomorrow, or the day after)
Submit Signed Tow by 5 pm Jan 6
Spend MORE time with Dionysius
Teaching requests for Fall 2023
Circle back to department about any Jan planning meetings
Book flights
Set time table for any collaborative RRDP work/publication prep that needs to happen this semester: Chicago pub, INC pub, collaboration with RACOM, etc…
Circle back to Capito project
Consider ask for funding from Dean’s office
Begin Med school rec letter
record mini myth
find out what is on that v old harddrive and back up to cloud
follow up with Lafayette
Contact more curators about feasibility of collections visits concurrent with this trip
This is the opening to Crawford 1983. I know I can visit material on deposit in Nottingham and any of Haeberlin’s collection that ended up in Berlin, but I wonder how likely it is to be able to track down any specimens that were in Pasinati’s stock? Do you know the whereabouts of one or more of these pieces of aes grave? This particular provenance would make the individual specimens deeply important from an archaeological and historical position. Link to Helbig 1885. Crawford in this piece is attempting to improve upon Cesano AIIN 1912. (She’s one of my favorite numismatic foremothers!)Wiki bio.
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) .” I think these must be on deposit in the coins and medals department, as they have not been given accession numbers and added to the collection database as far as I can tell…
—
The enumeration of my days is a discipline for myself. When this blog was anonymous this type of omphloscopy was easier as I could at once construct in my mind’s eye just the right sort of mildly (dis)interested external audience, while being assured that next to no one actually read these posts or cared. Now I know there are some of you are coming for a specific kind of content that has nothing to do with my own writing practice and personal reflection on my profession.
I’ve resolved to re-institute the used of categories to help you filter out posts of less interest. Posts in this series will (like last time) be marked “enumeration of my days”. The coins category will be used to mark posts with… wait for it… coins. Ditto historiography, modernity, material culture, textual evidence, and advice. I think that covers most of the things I usually blog about.
Today
Re-shelve books and reset home office space
Develop Tow proposal (DUE Friday, Jan 6, 5 pm)
Choose ideal dates for Rome trip (and even found my ideal flights!)
Contact curators about feasibility of collections visits concurrent with this trip (one, more tomorrow)
Respond to external advising email
Triage Emails from over Holiday Break (progress, not perfection)
respond to podcast request
Not Today (but maybe tomorrow, or the day after)
Spend sometime with Dionysius
Teaching requests for Fall 2023
Circle back to department about any Jan planning meetings
Book flights
Set time table for any collaborative RRDP work/publication prep that needs to happen this semester
Finalize Tow Proposal (DUE Friday, Jan 6, 5 pm)
Consider ask for funding from Dean’s office
Begin Med school rec letter
Contact Princeton and Rutgers about possibility of visits
Write BM about whether scans of Nemi photos can be had
Write Clare in case she’s seen these photos and is interested in those token images mentioned by Crawford
Write up Teaching Eval (overdue!)
A little more work on office environment
Triage Emails from over Holiday Break
Contact curators about feasibility of collections visits concurrent with this trip
Send Letter of Recommendation (grad teaching)
Not THIS Sabbatical
I found a post it note on my desk with a idea for a little book, potentially useful to the non-numismatists:
Liv Mariah Yarrow 