This is from Arthur Evan’s 1883 publication of his time in Illyria (Illyricum).  This plate comes between p.44-45.

We can compare the shape of the ritual knives (culter?) found at Aufidena:

Similar shaped sacrificial knives are reported in ritual deposits at Bolsena in the 1906 report:

I am at a quandary how to read this token type and its later legacy.  I think its ambiguity may be intentional.

The Legends Read:

“United for the Reform of Parliament 1795”

“May Slavery and Oppression Cease Throughout the World”

And (not visible in the image above) around the edge: “An Asylum for the Oppress’d of all Nations”

This token is a rarer variety of this more common issue without the clasped hands:

The figure on the left is older as indicated by his beard he shows a three youth how easy it is to break a single twig with his bare hands, while bundle of sticks at their feet could not thus be broken (fasces imagery?!).  The composition (but not the metaphor?) is inspired by a Roman seal ring type:

I became interested in the London Corresponding Society for the actions of 29 June 1795, particularly the use of stamped biscuits with slogans as a means for disseminating their message:

On the biscuits targeted at the masses gathered at the protest, slavery is metaphorical, not literally an abolitionist message.  As an interesting aside I think it likely that it was this character, Adam Steinmetz of Limehouse, who was on trial with other members of the Society in October who likely produced said biscuits:

Does this mean that slavery was always metaphoric when used in the rhetoric of the society?  Not so:

In short it was advantageous in many ways to the cause of parliamentary reform to link themselves with the abolitionist movement and there was a significant overlap between the two groups.  However, the parliamentary reform movement, held just that, better democracy in British government, to be the highest end goal, not the abolition of slavery, which would be only a reflection of the enactment of democracy.

Why does this matter?  Because at the same time, perhaps in the same work shop, were being made abolitionist tokens such as these:

links to acsearch.info

A nice illustration of the Pantograph technique:

Napoleon certain  cultivated an Augustan image on his numismatic portraiture, but I think the designer of this type had been strongly influence by coins of the Marsic Confederation struck during the rebellion of Italy against Rome.

Here’s one more Napoleonic Specimen with a slightly different obverse.

 

On this type, CRRO 509, The identification of the bird as a totemic of Juno Sospita and thus a crow based on literary sources has been widely accepted (see scholarship snippets below; snippets link to originals).  I disagree.  The bird is not perched on the goddess’ shoulder but atop her shield.  Below her shield the terminus end of a rod may be seen.  The bird would appear to any contemporary viewer during the Roman civil wars as legionary eagle, part of the standards of any legion:

In fact legionary eagles and standards are particularly popular as coin types during times of civil war and particularly for campaign coinages.  The types were first developed in 82/81 BCE and revitalized and further developed post 49 BCE.  It’s presence is explained on this coin by the moneyer’s claim to be an Imperator.

A bit of scholarship on the whole crow thing:

Further note to self:  When discussing this series in future be sure to comment on the African Obverses Juxtaposed against the Italic Reverses.

In a previous post, I claimed there were only two falcata’s represented on the republican coin series.  I’m not positive of about this identification here, but I will say that I think it highly likely that the representation of two different sword types on the trophy is intended to identify for the viewer what ethnicity has been defeated.

I’ve started to wonder if anyone has written anything on the representation of the captive’s gaze in Roman Art.  Usually prisoners of war are shown mourning their own fate like the woman to the left of the trophy, but on occasion the prisoner is shown contemplating the symbols of the Roman victory.  A powerful construction of the audience of the spectacle and the spectacle as a means of making imperium manifest.  Must check Ida’s work…

CRRO 468/2

 

The (statue of?) the emperor (Commodus) crowns a trophy with (statue of?) a captive beneath.  Notice the care taken to render the base on which each statue rests and the care to ensure the emperor dominates the scene through hierarchy of scale.

The figure in the foreground is about to sacrifice the bull/heifer?  with a double axe.   Notice the emphasis on the detail of the chain holding the animal’s head in place.

RPC 4 3255 (temp)

The only place I remember seeing the archaeological remains of anchors for such chains is the sanctuary of Apollo Claros in Turkey.  At that site the anchors number sufficient for hecatomb.  It is unlikely that such large sacrifices were a regular component of worship and thus the anchors by there permanence serve as a memorial to past hecatombs and serve as a promise of more on the same scale.

Before I can push the  “Tree and Sunset” article out the door I have to find an image of this metal (and some others) which have no copyright issues or minimal illustration fees.  I do not want to pay the British Museum’s hefty rates to be able to have the above image appear in print.   This nice copy from an enthusiast’s website was promising, and he was kind enough to tell me he just got his image of some long gone ebay  sale.  No luck there.  So I turned to old out of copyright catalogues which brought me to the sales catalogue for Isaac Wood’s collection from 1884, digitized by the ANS.  I was at once disheartened and elated to see how many anti-slavery types were listed, and just how many seem directly relevant to this article and which I’ve not come across before:

If you are intrigued by this post, you may also be interested in this conference I’m organizing in May 2017.

It’s the first real work day of a new period of research leave.  I’m not wholly free from university and college commitments, but mostly so, from now through next February and then I am only teaching a graduate seminar “History from/in the Arts” – An investigation into how and why we today use literary and visual media when reconstructing the past and how this intersects with context and function of ancient artistic and literary production.  I design it to let me bring in as much of my work on coins and historiography as possible and to allow as many different types of student projects as possible.

[Why you ask to I get this time you ask… Well I worked over contract for two years, never took my whole maternity leave, and never took the research leave given for having served as chair.]

I’ve cleared up over do emails and have set up a lovely office in one wing of a friend’s home so I can go out to work rather than work from our cottage.  I’ve fixed childcare schedule to give my self six uninterrupted hours five days a week for our whole time in England.  And frankly I just don’t want to work harder than that this summer.  (See my last post.)

What then are the goals for this period of work?

1. Keep on top of  conference preparations for next May!  (And delegate what can be delegated!)
2. Triage my unpublished writings.  One of the greatest gifts of my sabbatical and this blog is a sense now that I can write freely and easily as I need to.  If I have one great overarching goal for this period of time, it is to feel just as confident taking a preliminary piece of writing, often something constructed for a conference or invited lecture, and deciding how I want to publish it and pushing it through the publication process.  I’m so over the edited volume thing.  (Unless I’m the editor. 😉 )  I’m good a writing.  Not so good at editing and publishing.  This can be fixed.
3. The goal is to get as much out the door and in press this year as possible.  It feels like I need to clear the decks in another way.  To let go all my darling little projects that I’ve hoarded up.  I never want one of my former students to (have to) footnote an unpublished paper when building on my ideas ever again. To this end, I will be resisting the appeal of the new and try to discipline myself to stay with in the limit of sufficiency.   This will mean thinking about the intersection of thoroughness and sufficiency within my discipline(s).  I had some terrible role models that insisted on a level of completeness and exploration of alternative possibilities that can stymie all progress.  The goal is to use this blog not so much to develop new ideas, but use it as a resource to inform the revision of existing works.
4. This brings us to a confession of the unpublished, drafted docket:
   • a book on roman republican coins (70,000 w0rds), perhaps a new proposal to better reflect how the project has evolved.
   • A note on quantification using literary testimony and a die study of RRC 330.
   • A note on the interpretation Lepidus’ coin series (RRC 419) in light of Hersh and Walker’s redating (might be good to have this come out before the Kings at Rome piece mentioned below as then I can footnote myself.)
   • “Minucii, Modii and Priestly Implements:  A Case Study in Mid-Republican Political Iconography” another short coin piece.  (Actually have some grant funding for following up on this one this year…)
   • “The Tree and Sunset Motif: The Long Shadow of Roman Imperialism on Representations of Africa” 99.5% ready for submission to a journal, even formatted to house style. (7,817 words)
   • “Civil War as Foreign Conflict” (3,782 words)  Not a piece I want to publish in anything like how it stands, but in my research for it I spent huge amount of time documenting and taking notes on the historiographical tradition of the Colline gate and its aftermath.   I’d like to come back to that and morph the paper into something I would like to publish.
   • “Rome’s Past in the Present Tense The very contemporary, ancient history of Dionysius of Halicarnassus” (11,837 words)  in good shape!  I really like this piece and would like to get it out the door while it still feels fresh.  It uses maps and coins as a nice contextualization of the historiography.  I think it may go over 15,000 when polished for publication.  My hesitation to put this high on the goal list is I feel that I’d need to grapple with Dionysius corpus of rhetorical writings which sounds the opposite of fun.
   • A number of scripts and drafts and thematically related pieces on  the rhetoric of concordia, Memories of Opimius and Marius in 60s onwards.  More than 10,000 words but of greatly varying quality.  Like the Historiography of the Colline Gate piece, it would probably need a new frame work.
   • A long piece on Faustus’ use of Sulla’s memory  (~6,000 words) that is lost on an old hard drive.  I think my thinking has moved on and I should probably only re read it to remind myself what I used to think.  Some of the good stuff in this may have already been wrapped into the Kingship in the Late Republic piece below.
   • “A Prolegomenon to the Study of Glass Pastes in the Roman Republic” (~4,300)  Probably one of the direction my research wants to head towards in future.  Fun but I’ve not yet convinced myself I’m right in all I claim.
   • “Conceptions of Kingship in the Late Republic”  (8,100 words)  – I really love this piece.  It feels like how I want to write.  I suspect it will need to grow by 2-4,000 words for final publication but it feels like I have something meaningful and creative to say.  Bonus I’m talking about one aspect of this topic at CAMWS in October.
   • And then there are some of the blog posts here that have ideas that should be properly written up for publication.

So just 10+ projects, not counting the conference I’m organizing.  Hmm.  Clearing the deck indeed.

What order to tackle all this?  I’d best do some consultation….