” RPC 919 var. (date?). Sear, Imperators 587 var. (same). Buttrey, Studies in Numismatic Method Presented to Philip Grierson, 36. “

Crawford 30

So I was thinking about the second of these coin above, the one from Paestum, and that got me looking at this older post.  The implication of Cicero’s passage seems to be that magistrates in the provinces have lictors but they carry staffs not fasces.  If so, what are these fasces doing on the Paestum coin? Surely Cicero must be wrong, cf. Tomb of Cartilius Poplicola.

My other concern about the Paestum fasces feels more serious.  How would a magistrate at Paestum have axes?!  A symbol of military authority outside the city of Rome…

The top coin is just bonus.

How is it possible I could be letting so much precious writing time slip by obsessing about the coins of Paestum while trying to just find a few decent images for  this last chapter?! 

How is it possible I don’t have a copy of RPC vol 1 to hand?  Do you?  Do you want to tell me if this coin from Paris is listed there?

It comes up on image searches for Paestum in their database but is not in Crawford or HN Italy.  It certainly looks like Paestum …

The rendering of Cybele reminds me of her look on RRC 332/1.

Also notice the highlighted tongs and anvil which may well refer to the office of the moneyership, cf. RRC 464/2:

There are other Paestum coins that refer to striking.  I’ve come to think that coin (after jump) is likely inspired by the Caepio Piso issue, RRC 330/1.

The figure on the reverse is clearly a mistress of the beasts type representation, maybe Artemis of Ephesus, but perhaps a manifestation of Cybele herself?

I really admire this visual from Brackendorf 1998: 491 as a means of explaining how we assume coin types will be represented in hoards over time.

See Comments for Fuller Refs.

 

Tellus Stabilis is a goddess from the coinage from age of Hadrian onwards.  Notice she is not holding a rake as the catalogues say, that’s a yoke.

The other attributes are the short tunic of the farmer, the plow and two ears of grain.

This adjective and noun combination don’t appear in the extant corpus of classical literary Latin or the corpus of published inscriptions.  What does appear in epic poetry is the instabilis tellus!  Both Silus Italicus’ Punica and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, both in cosmological scenes.

This is BM 1867,0101.1124.  It is die linked to one of the few (only?) authentic Republican dies ever found, now in the Madrid Collection. 

The quaestor who issued this L. Fabius. L. f. Hispaniensis defected to Sertorius:

The location in which the die was found (near Orange) puts into question Crawford’s assumption that Fabius’ coins were struck in Italy.

I don’t believe this explanation of RRC 402/1 but it is still interesting to have on file as one in the range of interpretations that have been put forward:

From Nousek 2008.

Grateful for the comments that pointed me to a parallel, but more fully argued discussion by Harlan!

I’ve now found three references to three separate sling shot bullets with Sertorius’ name and title and also on the other side the word Pietas from Three distinct locations (map below).  Borja Díaz Ariño 2005 (quoted below) knows 5, and these three here may be in addition to those he documents (this is far from certain).

The phenomena has been interpreted in these ways:

Cf. also p. 113 of the same book.

UPDATE, best overview I’ve found so far:

Via Twitter Hannah Cornwell provides comparative evidence:

“Just checked: the Deities from the Sicily shots are not abstractions (Athena, Artemis, ‘the Mother’, Herakles, Zeus Keraunos). IG v.14. 608-10, no. 2407; also Chiron 12 (1982) 238-44.”

Context from Daremberg and Saglio.

Update 2/8/2022:

I tweeted about Perusine Glandes a long time back specifically the sexually explicit references to Fulvia. I was frustrated at how hard it was to find the citation not on the blog so I’m adding that old info to this post so they can be more easily found. (I think i put it in my teaching material at the time).

Benedetti, Lucio. 2012. Glandes Perusinae: revisione e aggiornamenti

Update 1-20-23:

Pompey or Pompeius Sextus sling bullet with CN.MAC IMP inscription not unlike coinage (cf. this post on RRC 402/1).

Then [Fimbria] hired a slave, with money and the promise of freedom, to go to Sulla as a pretended deserter and assassinate him. As the slave was nearing his task he became frightened, and thus fell under suspicion, was arrested and confessed. Sulla’s soldiers who were stationed around Fimbria’s camp were filled with anger and contempt for him. They reviled him and nicknamed him Athenio – a man who was once a king of fugitive slaves in Sicily for a few days.

Appian Mithridatic Wars 59

Ptolemy abandoned his alliance with Rome, out of fear for the outcome of the war, but furnished Lucullus with ships to convoy him as far as Cyprus, embraced him graciously at parting, and offered him a costly emerald set in gold. At first Lucullus declined to accept it, but when the king showed him that the engraving on it was a likeness of himself, he was afraid to reject it, lest he be thought to have sailed away at utter enmity with the king, and so have some plot laid against him on the voyage.

Plut. Luc. 3

gems

The Ptolemy is I think Ptolemy IX Lathyros…

Not sure how I didn’t make the mental connection prior to this but… the guy celebrated on this coin (RRC 401/1) is the same dude, Manius Aquillius, cos. 101, Mithridates’ killed by pouring gold down his throat!

I find it remarkable that a father with such a checkered career was rehabilitated by his son as the epitome of virtus.  Besides his death he was put on trial for his mismanagement of Sicily and he was given an ovation, not a triumph because he only fought against rebel slaves… (links to ancient sources)

How you die by this method is discussed in this Smithsonian article (the evidence that Crassus died this way is questionable).

Part of a speech from Posidonius preserved in Athenaeus from the Athenian usurper, Athenion:

‘King Mithradates is master of Bithynia and Upper Cappadocia; he is master of the whole continent of Asia as far as Pamphylia and Cilicia. And kings form his bodyguard, Armenian and Persian, and princes ruling over the tribes who dwell round the Maeotis and the whole of Pontus, making a circuit of three thousand six hundred miles. The Roman commander in Pamphylia, Quintus Oppius, has been delivered up and now follows in his train as a captive; Manius Aquilius, the ex-consul, who celebrated a triumph after his Sicilian campaign, bound hand and foot by a long chain to a Bastarnian seven and a half feet tall, is dragged along on foot by a man on horseback. Of all the other Roman citizens, some are prostrated before the images of the gods, while the rest have changed their dress to square cloaks and once more call themselves by the countries to which they originally belonged. And every community, greeting him with more than human honours, invokes the god-king; oracles from all quarters predict his supremacy over the civilized world. Wherefore he is dispatching great armies even to Thrace and Macedonia, and all parts of Europe have gone over to his side in a body. yes, ambassadors have come to him not only from Italic tribes, but even from the Carthaginians, demanding that they be allies to accomplish the destruction of Rome.’