I’m pretty confident we should see Divus Iulius on the reverse, not the young Caesar (Octavian):

RRC 518/2 – reverse legend reads POPVL * IVSSV

Mimicking language on restored tomb of Bibulus in the forum?

What’s up with the filleted scepter on Antony’s ship series ? Cleopatra’s ships?

RRC 494/3 – Aeneas

RRC 494/42-43 – Cloacina perhaps evokes Tarquin or Tatius legends?! esp the latter when paired with Concordia?

Do the fasces and curule chairs disappear in the Augustan era iconography because they recall regal power (esp. given the lack of Collegiality in the dictatorship)?! Cf. RRC 497/2

RRC 505/3 – diadem

RRC 507/2 – broken scepter but what precisely is victory doing with the diadem?

To what degree is putting one’s own head or the head of one’s living leader on a coin a regal move in the eyes of a Roman audience? I lean away from the significance given prevalence in the civil war post ides period.

Unfinished post…

Cf. posthumous tetradrachms of Philip

Refs to Foreign Kings (maybe)

Surrender of children imagery. RIC I² Augustus 200, 201A and 201B,

Kneeling Parthian. RIC I² Augustus 287-289, 304, 314 (with diademed Herucles restoration reverse), 315

Kneeling Armenian. RIC I² Augustus 290-292, 305-306

Armenian Standing with Tiara. RIC I (second edition) Augustus 307 (Cf. 514 (victory slaying bull), 515-517 tiara and case, 518-520 standing no tiara)

kneeling (generic?) barbarian 416

Possible Refs to Roman Kings

Tarpeia (299) implies world of roman kings? Ditto Foedus Gabinium types (363-364, 411).

Cn. Piso’s Numa bronzes (390-396) from c. 16-15 BCE.

Do plowing foundation scenes always imply kingship?! or a regal type act? (cf. 402 but also other earlier)

No wolf and twins? No wolf at all? No Aeneas in the post republican period?

A tweet that turned into a thread that really should have been a blog post so it would be stable and searchable.

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screen shots:

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Thoughts 3/24/25:

I’m interested that Augustus sits on a bench or subselllium. What is the symbolism of its usage here?

The only use of the term in epigraphy is also in relation to the Saecular Games.

Most specimens look like the one below with a blank field above the plectum, but a few including the one above seem to maybe have a tuning key.

Those with the tuning key may be

Schaefer Dies

AP = VE 39, not 1252

O = McCabe specimen above

Just possible also on AE but not clear from images

Looking over the Schaefer binders it seems like the die engravers didn’t like the blank space above a short plectum and kept trying to make it longer and on just a couple dies that plectum extension transforms into a lyre key. I don’t ascribe any particular meaning to this variation, just an interesting feature.

I am indebted to D. Levinson, @Ancientlyric, and James Lloyd for helping educate me on tuning keys.

It’s speculated that the name for the city in which this mosaic was found derives from their an indigenous or Semitic word meaning ‘black’.

Notice that the animals (esp. the giraffe = cameleopard) are African not exclusively “Indian.” Notice the emphasis given to the textured hair of three of the four captives. Notice the purple stripes on two of the captives garments and the diadem marking them as high status prisoners.

How would this read to a Roman veteran assigned to this colony or the children of such veterans as they lived in a north African landscape? The artist makes a clear distinction between the heroic/divine as white/pale skinned, the tanned/brown of the fauns and satyrs (non-human), and the black/dark brown of the bound captives. The image of Dionysus esp. Victory holding a crown above his head and riding in the chariot recalls imperial triumphal imagery.

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Blanchard-Lemée, Michèle. “Dionysos et la victoire: variations sur un thème iconographique à Sétif et à Djemila.” Comptes Rendus / Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, no. 1 (2001): 529-543. Doi: 10.3406/crai.2001.16281

RRC 279 and 276 are likely struck by the brothers of cos. 120 who killed himself in 119 when convicted because of his actions on the land commission. Given how the dating of these two issues is approximate 122-119 ish AND the drama around their brother it seems worth some further thought.

See:

Beness, J. Lea. “Carbo’s tribunate of 129 and the associated dicta Scipionis.” Phoenix 63, no. 1-2 (2009): 60-72.

Arachne Entry = = impression of Berlin specimen from Stosch coll. glasspaste Winckelmann 1863

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From Logeion:

BUT what of the PAV… could it be from this:

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You don’t need to read this post. You just need to read:

Colonna, Giovanni. “Gli scudi bilobati dell’Italia centrale e l’ancile dei Salii.” Archeologia classica 43 (1991): 55-122. It is gloriously illustrated. JSTOR link

There I learned that the first intaglio (impression) above derives from a coin of Pius. He doesn’t seem to know the above specimen but the reset of this post and FAR More he covers v well.

Impression of original:

Update 6-2-21:

Now I know why those shields were tickling my numismatic brain:

Update 1-25-22:

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Ferri, Giorgio. “I Salii e gli « ancilia ».” In Apex : studi storico-religiosi in onore di Enrico Montanari, Edited by Casadio, Giovanni, Mastrocinque, Attilio and Santi, Claudia., 87-95. Roma: Quasar, 2016. Ordered from ILL 27 June 2023

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Update 7-31-26

Museo Gregoriano Profano ex Lateranense, Vatikanische Museen, Italien, Inv.-Nr. 9534

Th. Schäfer, Zur Ikonographie der Salier, JdI 95, 1980,, 364 ff., Abb. 22-24 Zenon

Arachne image

A. Furtwängler, Beschreibung der geschnittenen Steine im Antiquarium, Königliche Museen Berlin (1896), Kat.Nr. 9515 ZenonJ. J. Winckelmann, Description des pierres gravées du feu Baron de Stosch, dédiée à son Eminence Monseigneur le Cardinal Alexandre Albani (1760), Kat.Nr. II,285 Zenon

This post supplements appendix 2 of my 2018 article.

Cf. RRC 372/1

Other coins-glasspaste connections

Knossos labyrinth

unbearded Janus

Artemis of Ephesus in her temple

bearded Janus

plowing scene

head of Roma

Portrait (Sextus Pompey?), cf. 483/2 and 511/1

man headed bull crowned by victory

another oath scene

Other gems of numismatic interest

A so called Sulla Portrait that looks nothing like 434/1

Link for next three (Notts collection).

Paphos sanctuary

Mt Argeus