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294 out 410 days: Obverse Legend Variants on Mercury Type at Suessa

~ Liv Yarrow ~ 3 Comments

Historia Numorum Italy no. 448 is listed with just one legend PROBOM. (P is actually closer to a Π with a short right leg. Note open form of R. These features consistent throughout).  A specimen with clearly this legend is illustrated in the plates. Most of the specimens in trade are from different dies with variant readings:

PROBVM

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PRBOVM

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PRBOM

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The meaning of the legend is unclear.  HN Italy suggests it comes from probus, meaning valid.  Although the basic meaning ‘honest, good’ seems fine to me too.

It is connected to a similar legend at Beneventum on a type, the imagery of which is a mirror image of RRC 15/1 (HN Italy 440):

SAMNIUM, Beneventum . 265-240 BC. Æ 20mm (7.03 gm). BENVEN-TOD, laureate head of Apollo left / PR-O-P-OM, horse prancing right; pentagram above. SNG ANS -; BMC Italy pg. 68, 1; Sambon 193; SNG Morcom -; Laffaille -. Image from CNG.

The correct resolution of the legend may be aided by consideration of the variant spellings observed.

Beneventum became a Latin colony in 268 and Suessa in 313.  These coins are associated with the First Punic War.  Hercules wrestling the Nemean Lion is a common enough artistic theme, known especially at the mint of Heraclea Lucaniae and occasionally at Tarentum.

Addendum.  I wasn’t really happy with the probum meaning ‘approved’ as it seemed a strange thing to me to write on a coin.  Out of keeping with typical legends (ethnics, magistrates, mint marks, the very occasional labeling of the image).  I even tried to convince myself Probus could be an epithet or title for Mercury or something.  I didn’t manage.  Just a red herring.  But … then I remembered the inscriptions on the Egadi rams of a roughly contemporary date.

Egadi 1: C(aios) Sestio(s) P(ublii) f(ilios) / Q(uintos) Salonio(s) Q(uinti) [f(ilios)] / SEX VIROEN[-?–] / probave[re].

Egadi 7: F. QVAISTOR· PROBAVET

Egadi 4& 6 have identical texts: M(arcos) Populicio(s) L(ucii) f(ilios) / C(aios) Paperio(s) Ti(berii) f(ilios) / Q(uaestores) p(robavere)

We’ll known more once the inscriptions are published on there own, but for now the use of the probo, probare, probavi on the rams is enough to let me think probum on the coin is more plausible than I first thought.

Want to know more?! Read Prag.

[Disturbingly, if you google image search, ‘Beneventum Apollo Coin’, the first image that returns of the coin is hosted on some satanic-esque website obsessed with pentagrams.  Reminded me of a time a student of mine unwittingly submitted a project full of images from some awful white power website. Appropriation of the past to support modern ideologies is a dangerous thing, especially on the intertubes.]

Who Issued Aes Grave?

~ Liv Yarrow ~ Leave a comment

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Communities issuing aes grave with Latin Colonies highlighted (missing Volceii, sorry). Map cannot capture the numerous types not attributed to any specific location or group. Map created using AWMC: à-la-carte Map to which it links. [FYI – runs best for me in firefox rather than other browsers.]
Crawford CMRR discusses the cast currencies of Italy in five groups (p. 43-46):

  • an as of about 300g maybe from 1st Punic War:  Tarquinii, Tuder, Reate, Praeneste, Carseoli, and Firmum
  • a heavier as (350-450g): Ariminum, Hadria, Vestini, another unidentified mint maybe Asculum Picenum
  • an as of about 300g followed by reductions probably from 2nd Punic War: Luceria and Venusia
  • reduced as from rebel communities during 2nd Punic War: Volceii and Meles
  • issues of Etruria and Umbria (including Iguvium on map above) on 200g standard from time of 1st Punic War

He summarizes circulation and weight standard thus:

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From CMRR p. 46 (links to page).

 

 

290 out of 410 days: The Impression Elephants Make

~ Liv Yarrow ~ 1 Comment
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From L. Ambrosini, ‘Un donario fittile con elefanti e Cerbero dal santuario di Portonaccio a Veio’. Image links to PDF with more images and references.

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I ended up at this article by way of this coin type from Etruria:

ETRURIA. Val di Chiana. Æ 18 mm (4.68 gm). Head of an African right / Elephant right with bell hanging from neck, Etruscan letter below. SNG ANS 36. SNG Morcom 44. HN Italy 69.
From catalogue: Commentary on this enigmatic issue has focused on the significance of the elephant, which appears to be Indian rather than African. This zoological observation seems to rule out a reference to the Carthaginian elephants and thus poses a challenge to dating this coin to the time of the Second Punic War. Yet E.S.G. Robinson, in NC 1964, pp. 47–48, proposed an interpretation that overcomes these difficulties. He submitted that the association of the elephant with an African head, probably representing the animal’s driver, points to an African origin. Rather than dating the coin issue to the time of Hannibal’s invasion, Robinson drew attention to the disaffection of Rome’s Etruscan allies in 208–207, centered on the town of Arretium, and suggested that the coin types expressed the seditious hope that Hasdrubal would arrive to reinforce his brother. In these historical circumstances, the elephant was a symbol, perhaps copied from earlier coin types, rather than a portrayal from life.

There are a number of these coins in the ANS collection and also a good selection in the acsearch.info database.  The main publication is:

Baglione, M.P. 1976. Su alcune serie parallele di bronzo coniato. In Contributi introduttivi allo studio della monetazione etrusca. Atti
Convegno Napoli 1975: 153-180. Roma.

Baglione records 158 known specimens at that time, the vast majority in public collections.  Baglione endorses (if I’ve read the Italian right!) Robinson’s dating and notes that W. V Harris, Rome in Etruria and Umbria (Oxford 1971) p. 140 also follows Robinson’s interpretation. I’m wary of dating by type alone and would like some new good hoard or excavation evidence to confirm this hypothesis.  I’d also think a little die study might be of use to get an idea of the size of the issue: it seems at first glance that we’re looking at multiple dies for each letter under the elephant (four different Etruscan letters are well attested) and a number of obverse dies.   Elephants do appear elsewhere in the Second Punic War on the coinage of rebelling Italic communities.  The most impressive example being the aes grave of Meles in Samnium which copy the Barcid silver coinage (Robinson, Essays Mattingly, 1956: 40, fig. 3A; HN Italy 441-42 (but no illustrations)).

I’m more interested in the unusual votive offering.    Ambrosini draws the parallel with the famous plate in the Villa Giulia (inv. 23949) with a depiction of a war elephant and her cub.  There is a second similar plate from maybe Sardinia that I can’t put my hand on a reference at this moment. from Corsica:

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Roma mediorepubblicana; Aspetti culturali di Roma e del Lazio nei secoli IV e III a.C (Rome 1973), no. 33 = Villa Guilia and no. 34 = Corsica.

The votive offering confirms the theme of elephant and cub in a military context.  That, of course, made me think of that passage in Dionysius that I quoted in a previous post about how the Roman’s wounded a cub to gain a tactical advantage over Pyrrhus’ use of elephants.

Update 3-19-2018:

Note that Cassius Dio believes that Etruria was recruited by Pyrrhus. But this account has been dismissed by scholars.

Let us remember that Ptolemaic Egypt supplied not only the elephants but also some 9,000 troops, both cavalry and infantry.

Ariminum types, Roman Currency Bar types

~ Liv Yarrow ~ 1 Comment
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ANS Specimens of Ariminum Cast Bronze. Click image form more details.

It strikes me that that the cast bronze types of Ariminum bear a marked similarity to the types of the Roman currency bars.  Ariminum became a Latin colony in 268 BC and the cast bronze dates to sometime after that date.  The one type I couldn’t find to illustrate has a shield as the reverse type.  Its as seems to be heavier than the Roman (350-400g) and it divides the as into a base-10, instead of base-12 fractions.  It shares these characteristics with Hadria and Vestini (Crawford, CMRR, p. 43 & HN Italy p. 17).

Ariminum types above all represent different denominations. [Scale can be so deceptive in online images!] Shield = quincunx, Sword and scabbard = quadrunx, trident = teruncius, dolphin = biunx, rostrum = uncia, shell = semuncia.

This suggests they were created as a series at one moment in time.  Perhaps they took their inspiration from the currency bars?  With the exception of the shell all of these are well known images on the bars.  Below is a collection of images to refresh your memory.  And one more specimen of Ariminum, the trident of which better parallels the bars.

AND, just as icing on the cake, the rostrum on the uncia confirms Kondratieff’s interpretation of the currency bar iconography from a different angle.  [HN Italy got the uncia identification right, but still kept the trident of RRC.]

There is nothing that comes to mind that would preclude the possibility that the shield and sword currency bars were made at the same time as the naval types…

File:Aes Signatum.jpg

1. République (-280 à -27) - Delcampe.fr

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You may know ancient Ariminum better by its modern name Rimini.

Update 4/22/2014: The main study of the Ariminum mint is available online: G. Gorini, La monetazione di Ariminum, Revue Numismatique 2010

 

288 out 410 days: Heavy Acorns

~ Liv Yarrow ~ 1 Comment
In trade
RRC 14/7. Semuncia circa 280-265, Æ 14.36 g. Acorn. Rev. Σ. Haeberlin pl. 40, 23-27. Aes Grave 40. Sydenham 14. Thurlow-Vecchi 7. Historia Numorum Italy 274.

Crawford say on p. 40 of CMRR:

Andrew Burnett acutely points out that the weight standard  of the semunciae of the first issue of cast bronze [sc. RRC 14] makes it clear that they represent a point of transition to the second, which is heavier than the first (the reasons are mysterious).

This point is still raised in serious scholarly works such as Alessandro Maria Jaia and Maria Cristina Molinari’s NC piece of 2011 (p. 90).   How exactly does this work?  And what does it mean?

Here’s Crawford in RRC vol 2 p. 595:

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I’m still unclear on the whole subject (hence the blogging about it…).  Does it mean that the heavy semuncia of RRC 14 shows a tendency to think about the pound as heavier than 322g?

A 322g as should have a 13.42 ish semuncia as its the 1/24th denomination.

In the ANS collection, the weights are: 19.47, 13.43, 23.78(!), 14.76.

A search of acsearch.info, returned these numbers: 18.49, 14.36, 23.51.

Not a large sample size but woah that’s some variation in the data.   And three, maybe four, of these seven specimens weigh enough to be a plausible weight for a uncia in the same series.

The ANS collection has RRC 14/6 specimens weighing: 20.2, 25.73, 29.33, 22.76, 19.64, 20.79, 25.22.

So what about the ‘heavy series’ RRC 18, no semuncia for comparison but we do have an uncia.  And remember on weight standard of 334g we should expect as weight of about 27.83 g for the 1/12th piece.

The ANS weights for RRC 18/6 are: 18.1, 18.42, 21.51, 26.13, 28.15, 32.57, 22.97, 39.36, 23.61

Holy variation, batman!  But again four of our RRC 14/7’s would fit comfortably into the lower end of this observed data set.

Time to step back and ask a really basic question.  How do we know its a semuncia and it goes in this series?  I opened up Crawford’s list of the Nemi finds.  Not one example of RRC 14/7.  There are for context 50 specimens of other RRC 14 denominations including 11 uncia (weights for the four specimens in Nottingham = 28.19, 27.04, 26.77, 27.46, cf. weights of RRC 18/6: 19.96, 29.09, 24.86, 28.55).  Jaia and Molinari 2011 (link above) have an appendix of all the hoards of just RRC 14 and 18 aes graves (i.e. those that should have an early closing date).  No semuncias. Not surprising really, small change isn’t the most desirable for hoarding.

Well, there is a big sigma on it, right?  That has got to stand for semuncia.  And we’ve got the comparative evidence of RRC 21/7 with an acorn and sigma on each side.  Still.  The weights bother me.  And it also really bothers me how much the type looks like the obols of Mantineia:

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ANS specimens. Click image for full refs.

One heck of a coincidence.

And I’m not really less confused that when I started writing this post, but I do have a mad urge to start collecting a big spreadsheet of specimen weights.  I’ll resist for now.

Update: See now also this newer post on related material.

 

 

267 out of 410 days: Mapping Mints and Other Things

~ Liv Yarrow ~ Leave a comment

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Mapping functionality is being increasingly incorporated into digital numismatic publications.  The flash maps of the provincial mints were pretty hot stuff when they first came out on the RPC IV website about 8 years ago.  They still look pretty good if you ask me.  The ANS has started putting maps into most of its sites, the most impressive being the map feature of CHRR online.  But sometimes you want more than one point plotted on a map and you want to choose yourself which points are plotted.  I was pretty happy with the functionality of AWMC: À-la-carte map.  I think my internet speed (DSL) made it a bit clunky or maybe it’s the new Turkish internet security initiatives slowing things down.  That said, still worth it.  My first simple test (featured above) was to put on a map the mints that produced coins that are hoarded with RRC 13/1. I couldn’t get Cumae on the map at this magnification and use full name labels.  It’s label and that of Neapolis overlapped.  It however does let you custom label points or just number each point to stop the overlap feature.   I then just used the snipping tool (like a screen shot) to grab the portion of the map I wanted.

I suspect this mapping program is going to figure heavily in my lesson plans in future semesters.

For modern locations, such as find spots, there are a number of websites, Multiplottr is simple enough. [Why, oh why, has it become cute to name websites leaving out the last ‘e’?!]  Here are the results from plotting, S. Giovanni Ionico, Torchiarolo, Oppido Lucano, Mesagne, Valesio, and ‘Campania’.  Not publication worthy but certainly good enough to think with.  Very fast and easy to edit.

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Crimean History in the News

~ Liv Yarrow ~ Leave a comment

There is a lot in the news right now about the Crimean War.  Where was Sevastopol?  Of course, I know about Florence Nightingale.  The Charge of The Light Brigade sounds familiar…   The major newspapers are helping us catch up on our snoozing in high school history class.  (Assuming we went to the sort of high school that taught such things.)   The Economic Times wants you to remember the Indian connection. The New York Times reminds us its all about how you tell the story, starting out with a reference to Tolstoy and filled with prosaic quotes from modern residents.  The Telegraph showcases the pictures of Roger Fenton, only occasionally addressing the issue of “staging”.

Oddly there isn’t much about the Ottoman Empire or the first Annexation of the Crimea in these popular histories, newsified accounts.  So just to add another perspective, let’s round up a few commemorative medallions.

Image courtesy of CNG. Auction 88, Lot 2017. RUSSIA, Empire. Ekaterina II Velikaya (the Great), with Abdülhamid I. 1762-1796. Tin Medal (43mm, 16.75 g, 12h). Commemorating the Treaty of Malka-Kaynardzha (Küçük Kaynarca). Dated 1774.

The catalogue entry reads:

The Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774 grew out of the internal strife in Poland, during which Russia was a supporter of King Stanislaus Augustus. During a pursuit of a Polish Bar Confederation (force of nobility) into Ottoman territory, a group of Cossacks in Russian service allegedly involved some subjects of the town in their rampage, inciting the Ottoman Empire into action against Russia. Ultimately, however, the latter’s dominance of the seas provided her numerous victories in the conflict. With the Treaty of Malka-Kaynardzha (Küçük Kaynarca), Russia received the unofficial governance of the Crimean Khanate, a large sum of war reparations, and two important seaports allowing direct access to the Black Sea.

The obverse legend translates as “two hands bring an end to the turmoil”.

4345 Catherine II Rossia 1783 Annexation of Crimea and Taman Medal Bronze
SHH 4345
Catherine II The Great / Map of Crimea, Sea of Azof and Taman
Annexation of Crimea and Taman Bronze 83 Россия 1783/1792 Diakov 196; Moneta 60, 162 (Follow link for image source.)

Here I have to rely on the ANS translation of the legends of a similar medal:

Obverse: [In Russian]: BY THE GRACE OF GOD CATHERINE II EMPRESS AND ALL-RUSSIAN AUTOCRAT – Shoulder-length portrait of Catherine II, crowned, laureated, and armored, r.
Reverse: [In Russian,on banderole]: THE RESULT OF PEACE/in ex: ANNEXED TO THE RUSSIAN/EMPIRE WITHOUT BLOODSHED/APRIL8/1783 – Maps of Kuban’ and Crimean steppe and peninsula with Asof and Black sea
Anyway.  The next time someone brings up the Crimean War as an analogy for the present situation, you might just ask if they don’t think the events of the 1770s and 1780s might not just be a bit more relevant.
What’s Greco-Roman about this?  Oh we could talk about alliance coinages or other such things, but really it’s here just because I like a bit of history.  If you are jonesing for something classically themed, I offer this British beauty:
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The discussion offered by Fitzwilliam website is quite good (click image for link).  Link and image broke. New image from British Museum.
And if you need just a little more propaganda:
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Obverse: THE HOLY ALLIANCE LA SAINTE ALLIANCE – British and French soldiers standing before drum cannons
Reverse: ENGLAND AND FRANCE UNITED TO DEFEND THE OPPRESSED AND AVENGE INSULTED EUROPE
My favorite detail of this last piece is that is from a design by Punch Magazine!
Postscript 13 March 2014: Here’s a newspaper piece which is alive to the legacy of the Ottoman presence in the region.  No surprise its from the English version of a Turkish paper.

Putting a Face with a Name

~ Liv Yarrow ~ 1 Comment

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The festschrift for Barclay Head is in the public domain and fully (beautifully) digitized!  What a fabulous portrait.  We should all do so well as to appear so dapper for history.

This provides us with an image of RRC 2/1 that’s wholly in the public domain:

 

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Both Crawford’s image (see last post for link) and this one are taken from casts.  I’m not sure they are the same cast.  Regardless the plate itself is a nice sharp image one can zoom in on. Click on the photo for the link.

Here’s the link to the specific discussion of the type in the festschrift.

I note that Gàbrici gives the weight as 10.15, whereas Crawford as 6.14g.