Caesar, Civil Wars, 3.110

Is it then a proverb of ours or of yours that a Phrygian is usually made better by beating? What more? Is not this a common saying of you all with respect to the whole of Caria, if you wish to make any experiment accompanied with danger, that you had better try it on a Carian? Moreover what saying is there in Greek conversation more ordinary and well known, than, when any one is spoken of contemptuously, to say that he is the very lowest of the Mysians? For why should I speak of Lydia? What Greek ever wrote a comedy in which the principal slave was not a Lydian?

Pro Flacco 65

 

As the sella curulis and fasces come up again and again on the republican coin series, I wanted to put a note up here of this iconography from Vulci (c. 300-280 BCE).

This is the front of the sarcophagus of Ramtha Vishnai and Arnth Tetnies (Now in the MFA Boston).  The couple join right hands on the far left of this snippet (the center of the panel itself).  Behind the husband are his attendants, one carries a chair and the other a rod, and then behind these are the musicians.

Update 20 Apr 2023:

Spotted this curule chair on a long small bronze relief in the Vatican 2023-04-15. More pictures of the same relief are in my camera back up on dropbox if they every become relevant.

Off blog (and a little on the blog) I’ve worried quite a bit about the coins of the Minucii.  I came across a different view of potential comparative iconography today, the work of a mid 20th century Etruscan scholar.

It was easy enough to get an image this:

 

I’ll have to track down her other references later…

 

Oh how I love a good digitized book!  A FB friend helped me decoded that Crawford reference I was worrying about a while back.  Which, in turn, led me to discover the joys of this late 19th century reference work and its rich repository of images.

If you want to know all about how helmets looked through out antiquity, see this long beautiful entry on ‘galea’.  Enjoy!

 

One of the delights of Caesar’s early Civil war coinage (RRC 452) is the attention that is given to the military attributes.  Often the axe is off flan on the silver or worn away so as to obscure the wolf (or dog) head terminus (it is easier to see on the gold; cf. also 532/1).  Also notice the Gallic helmet is imagined with double horns.   Crawford does not both to mention either feature.  I’m worried a little about this axe.  Compare it to the axe on the reverse of Caesar’s famous elephant coin.

The theme of this reverse is clearly priestly implements, but I can’t find a single other non-Caesarean priestly axe with an animal terminus.  They might exist (I didn’t waste that much time on this!), but they certainly aren’t common.  (Cf. priestly implements on architectural relief, numismatic examples).  So is the wolf headed axe specifically Caesarean?  Or Gallic? Or both?  Did Caesar make his own axe as high priest a trophy of his Gallic victories?  Now that’s a highly speculative claim.  OR, is the axe next to the trophy actually more like the wreath on this other Cesarean coin:

 

There is a strong contrast between the attributes of the trophies on this series.   It is hard not to imagine that a different victory is not here being celebrated.  Is that a Macedonian shield?

Gosh, I wish I knew where this piece ended up and that that place is a museum with a culture of laboratory testing.  There is so much more I want to know about this piece.

Here is part of the sales catalogue entry in English:

For this type, Michael Crawford noted [an estimate of] six mint marks (A, [B unattested in RRC], C, D, E, F, RRC I, table XXXI, p. 383). The author reports that each letter is attached to a single die. This die, found near Orange, in a chance discovery area has been declared to the D.R.A.C. Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur in 2005. We determined that it was a die of ​​the Roman Republic for coins struck on behalf of Lucius Fabius Hispaniensis in 82-81 BC . in a traveling workshop (Crawford No 366/2B). This die measures 53 millimeters by 34.5 millimeters and weighs 261.23 grams. The etched portion is 22 millimeters, 18 at beading. This die, in our view, consists of two distinct parts, probably tempered iron carrying the engraving and set in a tapered iron support, definitely soft iron, having a small bulge in the widest part. This money was used to strike the back of the copy of the British Museum (BMC / RR. II, p. 355, n ° 29, pl. C, No. 5, from the collection of the Duke of Blacas). Found in the South East of Gaul by Province (Narbonne), could it be that we are in the presence of a traveling workshop, moving with the troops going to Spain or rather returning to Spain? The die is not voided in anyway. It is not very worn either. It shows no break or trace die of deterioration or surface alteration. It seems official. With the copy of the British Museum, we have evidence that it was used. However, it has an alteration in the legend which seems to prove that the BM specimen was struck before the current state of our die. Finds of dies are exceptional, cf. JB Giard BN / R. I, p. 18, pl. I which lists the seven dies of the time of Augustus and BN / R. II, p. 7-10 that lists nineteen dies for the period between Tiberius and Nero. Most of these coins have been found in Gaul and Spain. The finding of dies of the Republic is exceptional.

I’m teaching 320 students this coming semester in two mega sections.  This is double last semester.  I’m loving the way large classes are challenging my pedagogic approach and make the time I invest in teaching prep feel much more meaningful and important.

For other professional reasons I’m going to need  to produce a new Educational Philosophy this semester.  The problem is the one I first drafted back in 2007 (I think), has been so well received that it has never in the last nine years or so seemed worth my effort to substantially update it.  I never meant it to be static, programmatic statement, but it has become such.  I need to update my teaching portfolio.  I’ve leaned on this ‘original’ too long.

Original Educational Philosophy

My classes are prepped, the students divided into teams (8 students per team, 20 teams per class), the internal websites are up and running.  It’s time to give some attention to the mentoring program I’m running this year, think about applicants to our PhD program, figure out when I’m going to have time to tackle this educational philosophy task and my teaching portfolio in general, and then get back to writing that presentation for Boulder the first weekend in March.  (I shouldn’t have started thinking about my longer to do list. Arg…)

Anyway.  Why is all of this here? Well, this blog is about keeping me on target and loosening up my writing when I get stuck.  Academic writing is going really well these days, only limited by my other time commitments.  This damn ‘philosophy’ has been being avoided and kicked down the road.  So I’m going to start brain storming about it here.

A list of random things that should be in my new E.P.:

• How I approach technology
• Why I believe in ‘extra credit’
• How I address issues of diversity and privilege (my last one is all meritocracy/stars in my eyes/warm fuzzies on this stuff)
• How teaching intersects with my research
• Why I like large sections
• What my teaching challenges are and how I may address them
• My obsession with transparent pedagogy, communicating WHY I do what I do.

Okay.  That gives me some stuff to kick around in my brain and ideas for individual posts.

Don’t worry we’ll be back to coins and Rome soon, but my life demands I work on some other stuff as well.

 

 

what are you really?!

When I’m trying to get a sense of what an engraver actually intended to represent, I collect little snippets of coin images to help focus my eye.  After a while I start seeing things; I swear this looks more like a chicken hat than anything else.

Anyway in all seriousness, the high helmet with streaming hair on this rider is the only real identifying attribute.  Crawford says the following:

Do you know what DS ii, 1448 stands for? If so, PLEASE leave me a note in the comments.  There’s been some recent discussion of the type, but not really about identifying the rider.  I don’t think it’s Tremulus’ equestrian statue… but the Marcii Philippi’s interest in equestrian themes is striking.

—

Update 2/15/2016:

Discovering Daremberg and Saglio has helped clarify things for me. It seems Crawford was drawing a comparison to this type of imperial iconography:

This cannot be right.  Given the lack of flowing plumage.  I may not have been too far off with my impression of feathers…  I think this earlier portion of DS, s.v. galea is better parallel.

They call this curieux, but then go on to compare it to the helmet of Mars on this coin type (RRC 400/1b):

 

This helmet type has been linked to the concept of virtus in Republican Rome by Myles McDonnell (see esp. chapter 4; note also his connections between virtus at the equestrian representations!).

We can also draw into the conversation here the iconography of helmets on the so-called altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus:

On the iconography of the three-plumed helmet, consider the two Etruscan figurines on the left:

Here’s some useful bibliography, from a new-ish commentary on the Philippics:

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I’m sharing it particularly because it supports my strong suspicion that this is indeed also Tremulus on this later type (RRC 425/1; cf. RRC 293/1 illustrated above):

 Update 2/15/2016:

Myles McDonnell makes the point very clearly in a footnote (p. 157):