adventures in my head
(Or Gryphon. Spelling variations make searching for coins on my blog a pain.)
Update 1-20-23:
This post should have had Lanuvium, Lavinium, Juno, and Papius as key words.
I must read more about the Pantanacci finds.
Carroll, Maureen. 2019. “MATER MATUTA, ‘FERTILITY CULTS’ AND THE INTEGRATION OF WOMEN IN RELIGIOUS LIFE IN ITALY IN THE FOURTH TO FIRST CENTURIES BC.” Papers of the British School at Rome 87 (10): 1-45. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068246218000399.
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.
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.
gems
The Ptolemy is I think Ptolemy IX Lathyros…
Liv Mariah Yarrow 