This is a particularly ugly specimen that’s poorly photographed, but what caught my eye was the evidence of failure of the reverse die: notice the large crack and crater in relief above the exergue line and to the left of the twin.  Cracked dies are useful for two purposes: (1) they suggest something of the intensity of the minting operation, that production was valued over  aesthetic considerations; and (2) they can help with the sequencing of a die study.

Notice also that some one has gouged the front of the coin, likely to check for plating.

RRC 20/1, CRRO entry

This type  has inspired many explanations for what iudex (judge) means on the back of this coin and how it relates to the figure in the chariot (RRC 404/1).  I thought I’d throw my had into the ring with a new (? ish?) suggestion.  What if the staff being held by figure in the chariot is actually a decempeda or pertica or similar measuring stick associated with land distribution/confiscation/centuriation/boundary disputes etc.  This would fit well with themes of Romano-Italic relations on the coinage of these years and obviously the large ear of grain behind the chariot.  This may be what the bumps on the staff are attempting to represent.  (Click on link above for comparative iconography).

This is a little problem specimen I got obsessed with.  I need to move on so I’m just throwing up some material here in case I want to return to the problem later.

My guess is that this is a Dacian imitation made from dies created by hubbing using a genuine Roman Republican coin and then recarved to improve the impression or quality of the imprint.  (More on hubbing in Dacia from a scholarly perspective, here.)

My little obsession was to see if I couldn’t prove this hypothesis via a die link.  My two big clues for the obverse was the large amount of space below the busts  and the edge of the flan and the little lump of what I think is beard on the cheek of the woman.  Circled in red in this pic:

I thought I might have spotted a die link even through the distortion created by hubbing and recarving. So I created the transparency to aid my visual comparison.

I’m not a hundred percent convinced after comparing it with two die linked specimens of the original type (specimen 1, specimen 2) which might have been die linked with the hubbing prototype of this imitation.  But, I think it’s still a likely hypothesis.  And I need to move on with bigger questions for now.

CRRO entry.

This is just a placeholder post to collect references for later use.

CRRO entry

On almost all dies for this type the legend reads PONTF MAX up the right hand side and and TVTOR REG down the lefthand side.  (The NTF, and arguably also an I, are in ligature.) On this specimen the die cutter and turned this arrangement around.  (A variation not noted by Crawford or the sales catalogue.)

The whole of legend describes the Roman figure (M. Aemeilius Lepidus, cos. 187), he is both chief priest and guardian of the king (Ptolemy V = the left figure).  However, in the normal layout the legend also serves to clarify and label the image.  We see the intentionality of the original legend lay out in this error.  Here an uninitiated viewer might mistake the boy-king for the chief priest!  Rather than understand that he is the king ruling by the grace of Rome.

Standard images of the type (RRC 419/2).

Here is another specimen from the same reverse die in even nicer condition. And another much uglier one that is also die linked, an illicit hoard must have come to the market with a batch of coins from this previously unknown die.  I hate the thought of the data lost with the dispersal of an undocumented hoard.  We could know so much more!   This specimen was was catalogued for auction correctly as a legend variation and seems to have been known since 1990 at least.

RRC 415/1

I was looking for a specimen or three which clearly represent the far left hand figure on the reverse of this type.  (An illustration for my talk in Boulder, CO in March — all about coins, so probably more blog posts to come!)  But here I noticed that at least on this die the trophy has been carved specifically to represent Macedonian armor.  This is made most clear in the tell tale scalloping pattern on the shield.   Numismatists will recognize the pattern from Macedonian coins, both before and after the Roman conquest.  It’s use to represent Macedonian armor is known from both Roman monuments like that of Paulus at Delphi.  Notice the pattern on the shield of the fallen Macedonian and contrast it with that of the Roman rider.

And also from Macedonian self representations:

Why do I care?  Well because it nicely fits into this idea I keep coming back to about Roman appropriation of the symbols of their defeated enemies.

Update 1/8/16:

Here’s another case of a clear specimen making the type more comprehensible.  Notice the two objects on either side of the base of the trophy.  Those aren’t wooden supports (never a feature of the trunk of a trophy)!  They are in fact two more Macedonian shields leaning up against the post. 

Update 5/17/21: “one [is] a small thureos, the other a small buckler, not Macedonian peltai.” – Thanks Paul Johnstono!

This is the same iconographic strategy as that used in RRC 281/1.

Update 10-5-22:

A nice use of a Macedonian Shield on a Campana plaque (relief):

It’s New Year’s Day night.  We’ve re arranged the books in our home and are eating chocolate cake and looking at pictures from Turkey and thinking about how good life is.  Here are few things from that trip I forgot about.

This is a statue of Trajan from the theatre at Perge now in the Antalya museum.  Notice that it changes the typical representation of the Griffins into an apotheosis of Herakles/Hercules!  This is a remarkably atypical rendering of apotheosis.  Is it a commentary on Trajan’s own divinity?

The thing to read on Herakles’ apotheosis is Holt 1992 and Rasmussen 2005.

From the same museum, here are some unusual bronzes:

I’ve no idea in what context there would have been a desire to represent a dead bird (eagle?!).

This (below) seems to be an apotropaic object with multiple phalluses.  Not terribly unusual of a theme, but also not as common in Asia Minor as elsewhere is my impression:

There is a significant literature on constructions of race and ethnicity and their intersections with ancient slavery and the body of scholarship continues to grow.  (One can read Eric Gruen on this subject, but I’d recommend the work of Emily Greenwood  and keep an eye on the future work of Sarah Derbew). I’m no expert on the subject and my primary interest in the topic is with regard to reception studies: how the model of the Greco-Roman past was and is used by Europeans and other colonialist states.

All that said, one of my pet-peeves is the casual dismissal of skin color as a factor in ancient slavery, something we often hear in classroom discussion (cf. duBois 2009: 31).  It was not the only factor and not always a factor, but it was a component and intersected directly with the potential futures for a slave.  A key case in point:

This is from Philostratus’s Life of Favorinus.  In this period, a beloved slave might reasonably expect to be freed upon the death of his/her master.  Not this one.  Autolecythus (‘he who carries his own oil’) is seen as a fitting accompaniment to the bequest of a library and a house.  Philostratus characterizes this slave in five ways:

1. A servile name denoting a common servile action related to Greco-Roman athletic and bathing culture.  This should make us remember illustrations of dark skinned (often ithyphallic) bath attendants in art of the high empire and related iconography.  (Example 1, Example 2, Example 3).
2. His ethnicity as an Indian.
3. His skin color.  Note especially the emphasis on the totality of his darkness.
4. His role as an entertainer in a sympotic context.  A role that has long been sexualized in Greco-Roman culture.
5.  And his hybrid linguistic status.  Not bilingual, but an ambiguous mixing of the two languages together.  Philostratus may be here playing with the idea of mixing and ambiguity in Favorinus’ own identity as a ‘hermaphrodite’ or ‘borne eunuch’.  The ambiguous man gives as a gift another ambiguous man.  Notice it is not any Greek that the slave uses but specifically the Attic dialect, the dialect of the second sophistic.  There is surely an interplay here between the Indian reputation for wisdom and the association of Attic with the language of Greek learning and philosophy.

And then there is the problem of the word ‘pet’.  Is Philostratus animalizing Autolecythus?  Or is it just the translator who has done this?  Perhaps a bit of both.  The latter for certain, but perhaps it is a fair if uni-dimensional reading of the Greek.  Here’s the Liddell and Scott entry:

Jester might be the most neutral translation, but notice that it is also a term that is used of objects desirable on pleasurable aesthetic terms, and perhaps even on sexual grounds.  Its semantic range of meaning is as ambiguous as the identities of both Autolecythus and Favorinus themselves.

Is Philostratus asking his reader to see Autolecythus as reflection and further characterization of his master’s identity?  I would say so.  And this only further erases the individuality and personhood of this particular slave.

We can see more of the translator’s reception of the text in this note:

He assumes the that Meno and Autolecythus must be the same.  Here’s Philostratus on Meno in his Life of Apollonius:

I see no need to assume that they are one and the same individual.

This is post came about because I’m teaching gender ambiguity in Antiquity this afternoon and I wanted to include Favorinus. 

12/11/15: This is a low traffic blog, rather by design.  It is just where I collect my thoughts on academic matters that are distracting me from my other tasks.  However, this post seems to have been circulated on some more high traffic facebook/twitter post.  I’m curious where and why its generating clicks.  If that’s how you came to read this, feel free to leave me a comment letting me know!  I hope you enjoyed what you found.  This may turn into a longer conference paper or publication in future so feedback is always welcome!