adventures in my head
Melpomene is the muse of Tragedy. I spotted her here on an Antonine coin of Parium. She holds Perseus’ Harpa and a mask with a Phrygian Cap. The allusion is likely to the Euripides’ Andromeda.
Melpomene often dresses as a hero from the stage, but most typically she has the attributes of Hercules, as on the coins of Pomponius Musa (RRC 410).
This issue from the latter part of Sulla’s dictatorship has control numbers in two series. One series, like the specimen above, has Roman numerals I-CLXX (Crawford thought this series one went to 169, rather than 170). The other series (illustrated below) has Roman numerals preceded by the letter A and a dot (interpunct). Crawford thought this series had only one die for each control mark like the earlier series and ran as high as CXXVIIII (129). However the Schaefer materials suggest this series only runs to 113 AND most numbers up to 36 are known from two dies.
My working theory at the moment is that they started over at some point a second A series and that were only one A-# die is known for a given number that is equivalent to a missing die in one or the other series.
Why do I care? I’m reviewing all the numbered issues for a talk in Chicago in early June using Schaefer data as a data set that can be used to check and possibly refine of Esty 2011. I’ll release all my spreadsheets/die counts after the paper is delivered and of course the Schaefer images are publicly available and all the ODEC issues are slated for transcription if they’ve not already been done.
ODEC = One Die for Each Control Mark
Every time I think I might quit twitter it gives me more goodies for my work.
Below is an extract from this 2021 multi-authored paper relating to coins (p. 176).
More coins however have been found and are awaiting publication, more Punic but also Roman and Greek. Needless to say I’m over the moon a the thought of getting some well dated archaeological provenance for any mid 3rd cent BCE Roman coins, possibly game changing.
The Edagi finds have inspired one of my articles already, not to mention many blog posts. The other part of this paper that really excited me was the tabular representation of the data on the Rams regarding inscriptions and decorative elements (p. 172).
As I’ve said elsewhere use of the verb probare in the inscriptions is our best clue for understanding this same type of inscription on Italic bronzes of the period (my 2021 book p. 11 fig. 1.6).
The Sestius Salonius Ram with Rosettes approved by the board of six men remains unique in all these features. I was discovered by fishermen, not by the archaeologists. It is looking more like an outlier as we find more Rams with good provenience associated with the battle.
As many as seven rams have the helmet design and four Victory. Its also interesting to see the recurrence of Quaestors. This suggests a rapid period of creation of these rams consistent of course with the war effort and our literary testimony. I’m also intrigued that Quinctius worked on his own (common for coins later signed by quaestors), but Populicius and Paperius seem committed to signing together as colleagues (echoing Roman commitment to collegiality in elected offices e.g. the consulship and censorship).
I’d very much like to compare the eagle sword imagery (Ram 12) and the swords imagery (Ram 19) with designed found on Roman coins (esp. currency bars, so-called ‘aes signatum’). As far as I can see detailed images of these two Rams have not yet been released (one official website; another official website). Below is what I found on the internetz.
This glass paste intaglio is borrowing and adapting iconography from the below coin type (RRC 452/2). Notice that the thunderbolt has been transformed into an anchor and a spear added to the design. The carnyx is rather indistinct but wolf head axe is clear. The intaglio is mirror image in lay out.
The name Caesar has been replaced by clasped hands (likely representing ideas of fides, pax, pietas, concordia, etc…). Caesar was also the first to inspire this imagery on Roman coinage. Below I give an example of RRC 450/2, but 451/1, 480/6 and 480/24 also have the clasped hands.
All in all a very nice addition to evidence discussed in my 2018 article on this type of glass paste and the influence of numismatic imagery.
Only loosely related update later the same day…
Because this object is stamped the curators speculated that it might have been created using the impression of a coin. The inspiration is clearly elephant type from Paestum, but gold-piece doesn’t look anything like specimens I’ve seen. The gold elephant looks more Indian and the bronze coins more African. Also I’ve just never seen a Paestum bronze in that good of condition. Crawford, Paestum 21/2; SNG ANS 777; HN Italy 1230.
N.B. I don’t have F. Carbone’s books to hand to see if he says anything interesting on the type.
ANS specimens not yet photographed.
I was making a silly fun morning tweet thread. It’s my habit if I need to wake up my coin brain and remind myself I love my job, but I don’t tend to put anything ‘serious’ in them. The danger of course is that I see something that I want to follow up on. So here’s a blog post to shake it out of my brain.
The offending coin is from Prostanna in Pisidia (see thread for a little more on this obscure mint).
It’s really not that mysterious, once I sorted through the headaches of the various transcriptions and spelling variations. The exergue reads OVIAPOC and the type description changes this to an Anglicized rendering Mount Viaros. I did eventually work it out. Its modern name is Davraz Dağı (or Tepe), and it has a commanding presence in the regional landscape.
The same mountain appears on two other coin types (more? let me know!)
Notice that the mountain name also appears on this coin but is spelt BIAPOC (Biaros). The different transliterations were commented on is a rather odd book from 1927. I’m not sure how seriously to take any of this speculation. (Opinions welcome.)
The mountain and the tree(s) were clearly of local meaning for a very long time. This is a coin type presumed to date from the first century BCE.
Sacred mountains are well known in Central Anatolia and perhaps in the Roman era the most famous (esp to numismatists) is Mount Argeus. Weirdly, the Wikipedia entry for the mountain says nothing about its importance culturally in the Roman period.
The people of Prostanna clearly revered their mountain for centuries and yet I can find no textual references to the mountain (Cf. ToposText), only the coins and the landscape. However that 2005 article above does a great job of bring to light the sacred spaces on the mountain itself and when joined with the coins helps us recover something of the lived experience.
So much lost human experience, but I have say if there was more linked open data (LOD) to connect all the various transliterations and to get databases to speak to each other, I’d have not spent so much time on this mountain this morning.
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Cook in 1914 speculated that the mountain was associated with ‘Zeus’, but this is little more than a guess:
After thought.
Some scholarship on the coins of Prostanna:
Eugene Lane’s work on the temple of Men seen on the coins.
Bru. (2017). Territoires, « dieux-fleuves » et monnayages. In La Phrygie Parorée et la Pisidie septentrionale aux époques hellénistique et romaine (Vol. 401, pp. 105–143). https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004337404_010
Link to Num Chron 1840 article by Birch.
My time with the Hersh archive is too precious to chase up the post 1840 history of this funny coin type, but this is a note to myself to do it in my copious free time down the road. A nice example of how we desperately want our material culture and our texts to intersect.
Liv Mariah Yarrow’s contribution in the section on New Quellenforschung has perhaps the greatest potential usefulness in this volume. This chapter sets forth a typology of fragments (or reliquiae, the term Yarrow prefers here) and their uses by ancient authors. As noted (p. 251), the basis for this discussion comes from Yarrow’s previous work, which itself was influenced by a 1980 article by Brunt. This chapter functions as a ‘How-To’ guide on utilising this typology and, more generally, as an argument in favour of it. It does so through an analysis of Diodoros as both a source transmitter and a source being transmitted. The most exciting aspect of this chapter is that the methodology and typology can be genericized, and are applicable to the transmission of any fragment, not just those of Diodoros. Yarrow here provides an approach to fragmentary evidence that can be emulated, and will supplement the study of a wide variety of sources.
From W. P. Richardson’s review in BMCR of Lisa Irene Hau, Alexander Meeus, Brian Sheridan, Diodoros of Sicily: Historiographical Theory and Practice in the «Bibliotheke». Studia Hellenistica, 58. Leuven: Peeters, 2018. x, 612. ISBN 9789042934986 €115,00.
I thought no one would ever read this chapter. I’m delighted to have proof at least one colleague did and liked it.
Full Text of Chapter
Citation:
Bustany-Leca, Catherine. “La statue équestre de Sylla « in Foro »: une rupture dans les codes de représentation de l’homme public à Rome ?.” In Corps, gestes et vêtements dans l’Antiquité: les manifestations du politique, Edited by Bonnard, Jean-Baptiste. Symposia, 77-86. Caen: Pr. Universitaires de Caen, 2019.
Machine translated abstract:
“Cic., Phil. 9, 6, 13 underlines the transgressive character of the equestrian statue in gilded bronze erected by Sylla. The originality of the statue lies as much in the representation on horseback as in the material. Republican precedents exist, however, mentioned by Plin., Nat. 34, 28-29; Liu. 2, 13, 11; 9, 43, 22; Cic., Att. 6, 1, 17. An “aureus” of Sylla can account for the iconography of the lost statue: Sylla, in a toga and without arms, would not be represented as an “imperator”; the horse could embody the “equus publicus”.”
“Or shall we bring in a multitude of homeless lower classes, like those driven from hence, who because of debts, judgments, and other like misfortunes will gladly remove to any place that may offer? But these, even though otherwise of a good and modest disposition — to concede them this much — yet just because of their being neither native born nor of like habits with us, and because they will not be acquainted with our customs, laws, and training, would no doubt be far, nay infinitely, worse than our own lower classes.
“Our own native born masses at least have here their wives, children, parents, and many others that are dear to them, to serve as guarantors of their loyalty; yes, and there is their fondness for the soil that reared them, a passion that is implanted in all men and not to be eradicated; but as for this multitude which we propose to invite here, this people without roof or home, if they should take up their abode with us having none of these pledges here, in defence of what blessing would they care to face dangers?!”
—Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ words ascribed to the Senator Agrippa Menenius in 491 BCE.
It sounds a remarkably modern means of stirring up fear.
Liv Mariah Yarrow 