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92, 93, 94 out of 410 days: Fight or Flight

~ Liv Yarrow ~ Leave a comment

I’m trying to tamp down the panic of leaving the country for ten months.  I no longer wake up with coins in my mind: its all logistics and I’ve not slept straight through the night for days.  I wake up with the ‘what ifs’ and ‘must remembers’ and cold sweats.  

Monday I finished section two of the current chapter by moving two large epigraphic-ish topics (1,200 words plus) into an appendix to keep my narrative flow smooth.  

Tuesday morning I realized I really should have ordered images of gems for section three from other museum collections, oh say two months ago.  They both went out Wednesday. No word back.

Yesterday, I fought with HSBC over my lost 720 dollar wire transfer and tried two other wire transfer services both of which went better than HSBC but resulted in prohibitive fees on the Turkish bank end.

I when to the doctors (at long last, I hate doctors, not unlike Cato) and scheduled even more check-up, preventive medicine type things.  I researched the cost of out of pocket medical care in Turkey.  (Totally affordable from an American perspective, no surprise.)

I finalized a going away party.  I went running.  I cooked.  Apparently, I cook when stressed.  

I dealt with messy little bits of college matters that reared their hydra-like heads even on sabbatical.

I felt guilty for ignoring my blog.

Bad Neighborhoods

~ Liv Yarrow ~ Leave a comment

Today I’m worrying over the Turris Mamilia, or the Tower of the Mamilii.  Really there are only three pieces of evidence.

1) Passages in Festus.  The reference is under the entry for the October Horse:

“October Horse” is the name of the horse which is annually sacrificed to Mars on the Campus Martius in the month of October. It is the right- hand horse of the winning pair in a chariot race. There used to be an  intense struggle for its head between the inhabitants of the Subura and those of the Sacra Via: the latter hoping to affix it to the wall of the Regia, the former to the Mamilian Tower. And the tail of the same animal is conveyed to the Regia, with speed enough for the blood to drip from it to the hearth, for partaking in a divine service.

(Here’s a  French translation.)

2) The fact that some members of the gens in the third century had the cognomen ‘Turrinus’.   Refs can be found here and here.

3) An inscription, CIL 6.33837 = ILS 7242:  “M. Octavius M. l. Attalus centurar[ius] a t. M.”  where the t.M. is taken to be a reference to the Turris Mamilia as a topographical marker.

This is not a lot of evidence. Frankly its not absolutely clear that all three pieces of evidence refer to the same ‘tower’.  What we make of it all pretty much depends on how one wants to think about the Festus passage.  Is this tower an ancient and embedded part of the religious ritual? Is this proof of the Mamilii being part of the archaic Roman landscape on par with the ancient kings?  Is some ancient power struggle between two claimants to the throne crystalized in this annual rite?   Or was the tower just any old third-century landmark in an otherwise squalled, hot and dirty neighborhood?   A point of focus in the district that was co-opted into the ritual contest for convenience sometime after its building presumably well after the origins of the religious festival itself?

None of the other sources on the October horse and the battle for its head emphasized the Mamilii in anyway, although we do hear about the Subura participants in this contest from Plutarch.

89, 90, 91 out of 410 days: a Sea of Sukkot

~ Liv Yarrow ~ Leave a comment

My neighbors have finished the High Holidays and booths (sukkah singular, sukkot plural) have been appearing in every spare space that is open to the sky in preparation for the beginning of Sukkot this coming Wednesday.  The singing will go on long into the evening from inside the booths.  There will be large citron fruits and palm branches and myrtle and willow too.   I can see just one remaining unconstructed sukkah in a neighbor’s yard.  In just a few hours the hammering is sure to begin.  

It’s a good time of year to be outside, to be with family and friends.

The weekend SDA’s family came into the borough Saturday, a lovely time.  Sunday I had a little freak out about moving to Turkey for 10 months.  An attack of the what-ifs.  I find answering the question ‘Why are you going?’ exhausting.  Even to myself.  Also the question ‘aren’t you nervous about Syria…’  I am nervous about many things.  Money, my ability to write efficiently there, the stress of everyday activities, and isolation.  But not about Syria.  

So I made Foccacia.  

The most academic things I did was haggle with a street vendor for eight Loebs.  He threw in the ninth (Horace) for free.  And, wrote a sentence or two about the turris Mamilia more on that here later perhaps.

***

Sukkot always reminds me of the line in 2 Maccabees 1:9.  This book has a few letters from Jews in Judea writing to Jews in Egypt appended to the beginning.  The book as a whole is a testament to the Divine assistance to the Maccabean restoration of the temple (i.e. in contrast with 1 Maccabees which is more a history of the new dynasty).   The one line urges the Jews in Egypt to celebrate the feast of Booths in Chislev.  The ‘real’ feast of booths is the one now in Tishri.  The letter seems to be drawing a parallel between the establishment of the new holiday Chanukah and the activities and traditions of Sukkot. Borrowing the Torah-endorsed legitimacy of the latter for the former.

88 out of 410 days: Seeing Too Much

~ Liv Yarrow ~ Leave a comment

Reverse Image

This reverse type has been the victim of too much speculation.  Crawford in RRC wants the type to be visual representation of the moneyer’s name.  The other type made at the same time by the same moneyer seems to pun on the constellation the Triones (a.k.a. the seven stars of the Plough a.k.a. the Big Dipper a.k.a. the Great Bear) and the moneyer’s cognomen:

To make a pun out of the winged boy on a dolphin Crawford had to speculate that it might represent Melicertes (a.k.a. Palaemon) and thus by extension his mother Leucothea whose name sounds like Lucretius.  This has then been spun into a legendary genealogy connecting the family to this goddess and tying the moneyer to Odysseus via a connection with Antium. [Hence how I found this in my notes today and thought I’d write it up as it’s unlikely to ever really make it into the book.]

The problem is that is that Melicertes is never represented with wings.  So says the LIMC (not just the website, I promise I checked the books as well on this).   That is just a regular little cupid (eros) on a dolphin.  A perfectly normal, completely common representation on gems, lamps, and dozens of other decorative art forms. One that appears on many coins as well:

 

 

And even on Roman coins:

 

 

The main problem with the tentative suggestion of Melicertes is not the speculative reconstructions above, but that by saying “winged boy” in the catalog entries of every major database it never returns in searches for “eros and dolphin”  or “cupid and dolphin” thus virtually erasing an important link in the history of the iconography.

Of course, Melicertes can be represented riding a dophin.  And there are lots of boys on dolphins, most famously at Tarentum.  But the wings rather make a difference!

As a fun aside:

Image

 

Yep that’s George Washington!

 

 

Acrostolium (again)

~ Liv Yarrow ~ Leave a comment

RRC 213

I lied.  I wasn’t ready to move on.  I kept poking around and my eyes caught this specimen from Andrew McCabe’s collection:

Image

And I was surprised to see a head in the acrostolium because I thought I knew all the Roman republican types with this sort of head.  All two of them.  We discussed them at length earlier.  So I checked Crawford.  No such note.  Then the ANS and BM specimens.  Possible but nothing that really looked conclusively similar.  The auction catalogs gave slightly better results and I turned that uncia above.  The neck of the head seems really clear.  I assume that even when it isn’t clear, it is meant to be there:

Link

Figures on Prows (again)

~ Liv Yarrow ~ Leave a comment

I was poking through the ANS database thinking about the placement of symbols in relation to the main type.  Does the symbol float in the field?  Is it interacting with the figures?  Does it sit on a line suggesting it is on the same visual plane?  How can I be sure the placement is significant versus unintentional?  Of course I was looking for patterns, consistency, anything to suggest deliberate choice.  Doing this I stumbled upon the coins of Arados.  The mint is well studied and is well represented in most collections. See the specimen above.  Here are a few more:

 

 

 

These last two reminded me of our discussion of the seal of the Sidonians and possible precedents.  They confirm the use of the reclining figure on the prow in the region.

The first two make me think that small figures standing on prows were just part of the Hellenistic visual repertoire (esp. Athena) and that would make it more likely for the die engravers and/or designers to integrate a symbolic figure into the design proper….

So also the silver from Phaselis produced after 160BC when Rome detached it from Rhodes and added it to the Lycian Confederacy:

 

(It does look a wee bit Roman now doesn’t it.)

***

Enough musing back to my revisions.

73 out of 410 days: Pompey and Freedmen

~ Liv Yarrow ~ Leave a comment

Romans had a practice of granting manumission to some slaves.  Those receiving such grants held a separate status from the citizens, i.e. free men.  As freedmen they had more limited legal rights and defined obligations to their former masters, now their patrons.   That’s pretty basic, but the social function of this group certainly evolved over time and we might think about the attitudes and social conditions that preceded the evolution of the imperial freedmen.  I came across two passages today that got me thinking along those lines:

 These things I have heard; I have heard also that this theatre was not erected by Pompey, but by one Demetrius, a freedman of his, with the money he had gained while making campaigns with the general. Most justly, therefore, did he give his master’s name to the structure, so that Pompey might not incur needless reproach because of the fact that his freedman had collected money enough for so huge an expenditure.

 

While these men kept up their conflict, Pompey, too, encountered some delay in the distribution of the grain. For since many slaves had been freed in anticipation of the event, he wished to take a census of them in order that the grain might be supplied to them with some order and system. This, to be sure, he managed fairly easily through his own wisdom and because of the large supply of grain; but in seeking the consulship he met with annoyances and incurred some censure.

These passages would need to be contextualized by say Sulla’s mass manumission of the so called Cornelii, some 10,000 individuals, or the power he gave to Chrysogonus.  

The basic moral seems to be that benefiting too many freedman or one freedman too much is viewed with suspicion.  On the other hand our imperial sources may be reading too much of their present social reality back on to their accounts of the Republic.   

Contrast how Plutarch does not mention distributions to freedmen, but instead emphasizes that there was so much grain available it was give to foreigners as well — yet another group whose influence was a site of socio-political anxiety in the Late Republic.  Cf. the careers of Theophanes of Mitylene and Balbus.

I was getting a little lost in the literary accounts of 56-55 BC.  This post is just a little break to try to return to the coins.

71 out of 410 days: What’s in a Name?

~ Liv Yarrow ~ Leave a comment

Gold coin.This coin of Pompey is probably a small issue struck as a commemorative piece and/or gift on the occasion of his second triumph.  The choice of legends are particularly revealing about both the date of issue and also the impression Pompey wished to convey. Three passages are needed for context.  First, Granius Licinianus 36.2.4:

And Pompeius, when he was 25 years old and still a Roman knight – something which no-one had previously done – celebrated a triumph as pro-praetor from Africa, on the fourth day before the Ides of March. Some writers say that on this occasion the Roman people were shown elephants in the triumph. But when he came to enter the city, the triumphal arch was too small for the four elephants yoked to his chariot, although they tried it twice.

I include this for how it emphasizes his having served with Praetorian imperium as a private citizen and because it shows the close connection between Elephants and Africa in the Roman mind.  Next up is Plutarch, Life of Pompey 13.4-5.

[When Sulla] perceived that everybody was sallying forth to welcome Pompey and accompany him home with marks of goodwill, he was eager to outdo them. So he went out and met him, and after giving him the warmest welcome, saluted him in a loud voice as “Magnus,” or The Great, and ordered those who were by to give him this surname. Others, however, say that this title was first given him in Africa by the whole army, but received authority and weight when thus confirmed by Sulla. Pompey himself, however, was last of all to use it, and it was only after a long time, when he was sent as pro-consul to Spain against Sertorius, that he began to subscribe himself in his letters and ordinances “Pompeius Magnus”; for the name had become familiar and was no longer invidious.

Here we get some accounts of how Pompey came to be called ‘the Great’, its connection to his African campaign, and when he himself embraced the name.  What’s missing from this passage are the associations with Alexander which were well known in antiquity and today.  Finally, Cicero, For the Manilian Law 62.6-7 (cf. Cicero, Phillipics, 11.18-19):

What was ever so unusual, as, when there were two most gallant and most illustrious consuls, for a Roman knight to be sent as proconsul to a most important and formidable war? He was so sent—on which occasion, indeed, when someone in the senate said that a private individual ought not to be sent as proconsul, Lucius Philippus is reported to have answered, that if he had his will he should be sent not pro consule, but proconsulibus.

The final statement puns on the double meaning of pro consule: it can be translated either ‘not instead of one consul, but instead of both’ or ‘not with the rank of proconsul, but instead of both consuls’.  Its this controversial appointment, again as a private citizen, that the reverse legend celebrates and associates with the triumphal figure.

***

Today was the long slog through typing in the text I wrote long hand yesterday and adding citations and edits as appropriate.  Lots of progress just not inspiring.   I have between three and six more coin types I want to incorporate into the chapter all of which I’ve written about here on the blog at one time or another.   Tomorrow, fresh, longhand, I could have something like a full rough draft.

69, 70 out of 410 days: Out and About

~ Liv Yarrow ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday was gorgeous.  I spent nearly the whole day on the bike.  A good battery recharge.   As SDA and I were coming out of Prospect Park and waiting at the traffic light [Yes, some cyclists really do obey rules of the road.], I saw the triumphal arch at grand army plaza again-for-the-first time.  Check out the spandrels!  The left Victory has a palm branch and a little victory on a globe, but the right Victory has fasces with axes AND the constitution.  

Image

She’s holding it like Moses holds the 10 commandments and its clearly inscribed as the constitution to make sure there is no question.  The juxtaposition very nicely contextualizes the symbolism of the fasces in the late 1800s as a law-an-order motif.

The arch itself is dedicated to the “Defenders of the Union” and designing began 1888 and was unveiled 1892.  All this just further informs how we read the fasces in an early 1900s context for our Liberty Dime digression.

Today’s plan is to do some more long hand drafting out at a coffee shop away from the distractions of technology.

 

Unpleasant Reminders

~ Liv Yarrow ~ Leave a comment

It would be tedious to mention all the different men who have spent the whole of their life over chess or ball or the practice of baking their bodies in the sun. They are not unoccupied whose pleasures are made a busy occupation. For instance, no one will have any doubt that those are laborious triflers who spend their time on useless literary problems, of whom even among the Romans there is now a great number. It was once a foible confined to the Greeks to inquire into what number of rowers Ulysses had, whether the Iliad or the Odyssey was written first, whether moreover they belong to the same author, and various other matters of this stamp, which, if you keep them to yourself, in no way pleasure your secret soul, and, if you publish them, make you seem more of a bore than a scholar. But now this vain passion for learning useless things has assailed the Romans also. – Seneca, On the Shortness of Life, XIII

I abhor the sound of a ticking clock.  My great grandparents often babysat me.  If my mother was to come after my bedtime I’d be put to rest on a stiff rattan ottoman under a woolen afghan at the far end of the living room next to the fireplace.  I would lay there listening to the mantel piece clock tick away the seconds of my life.  Each chime would tell me exactly how long I’d been lying there failing to sleep.  SDA’s grandfather collected clocks.  We have a great number of them around our home and would enjoy having many more.  All of them are stopped.  I don’t want any such reminders, thank you very much.

Clearly Seneca thinks I’m wasting my time.  No, my knowledge doesn’t make any one better off particularly, but the process of acquiring it is certainly immensely pleasurable, certainly more than catching a tan.