Appius Claudius Pulcher, T Manlius Mancinus and Q. Urbinius; Denarius 111 or 110, AR 3.98 g. Helmeted head of Roma r.; behind, quadrangular device. Rev. Victory in triga r.; in exergue, T.MANL.AP·CL·Q·VR. Babelon Manlia 2 and Claudia 3. Sydenham 570a. Crawford 299/1b.T. Quinctius. Denarius 112 or 111, AR 3.92 g. Bust of Hercules seem from behind, head l., club above r. shoulder. Rev. Desultor to l.; behind, B. Below horses, TI – Q on sides of rat l.; in exergue, D·S·S incuse on tablet. Babelon Quinctia 6. Sydenham 563. Crawford 297/1a
So this is a pretty left field thought. But as I’m thinking about the coins of Teanum I can’t help but think how weird it is to have a triga, a three-horse chariot. It’s not really a well known or convenient hitching configuration. One could speculate that it comes from copying a quadriga type like that found at Selinus or other Sicilian mints where the front horse rather obscures the next one so that it almost looks like a three horse configuration.
Could there have been a little fad for drawing inspiration from old allied coins of the Punic Wars at the end of the second century? Probably not. Let’s call it a fun coincidence.
Update 4/18/14: I came back to this post briefly when I read this passage in Woytek’s chapter in Metcalf’s Handbook (p. 326):
Ritter, H. W. (1982). Zur römischen Münzprägung im 3. Jh. v. Chr. Marburg.
Update 4/30/14: On die engravers making errors in the number of horses they carve when copying a prototype, see:
Hollstein, Wilhelm. – Ein kurioser Quadrigatus im Kestner-Museum Hannover. NNB 1996 45 (9) : 8. AP Abstract: Among the Quadrigati the museum (=> 60-10031) is a specimen (No. 107), in which the Quadriga has five horses with ten front, but eight hind legs.
Bronze Coin, Frentani. ANS 1957.172.36. SNG ANS 1.129. HN Italy 621.
Check out the legends on each side of this coin. They are both FRENTREI, but with the Rs looking for all the world like Ds and the F like an 8. Oscan isn’t really that far off the Latin or Greek alphabet:
It’s main difference is that its written right to left (like Hebrew and Arabic), rather than left to right (like English and kin). I like the above specimen because it has the same name written in different directions on each side. L>R on the obverse; R>L on the reverse. It’s as if we get a little window into the moment of evolution of the language among the Frentani.
It uses a locative ending like the first coin of Larinum to show a Roman influence. The coins of Larinum during the Hannibalic War period continue to be of influence for the swap between Oscan and Latin and the D/R letter forms (see Rutter in HN Italy, no. 624).
post script. Doesn’t the little beanie hat style of Mercury’s wings remind you a little of how they were rendered on Suessa’s bronzes… or at Teanum ?
Looking again at the coins of Suessa, Cales, and Teanum, especially specimens which have been on the market, it occurred to me how heavily used the obverse dies seem to be, especially at Teanum:
Even after the obverse die break in ways to mar the face of the god portrayed they keep on being used. Such intensity is not consistent with a ‘vanity project’ but instead with a more rushed economically driven agenda. Not a bad die study opportunity here. [The last two are the same obverse die as this Fitzwilliam Specimen; interesting specimen with a prow mint symbol at CNG site].
The other curiosity that might hint at wide circulation (and by extension striking in some significant volume) is the fact that the Boii of the Po river valley (aka Cisalpine/Transpadine Gaul) borrowed the type of Cales’ bronzes for an obol silver issue:
The specimen above is called a ‘drachm’ and the catalogue notes the assignment to the Boii is provisional. (We need a few good hoards or excavation finds…)
This last one is listed as possibly from the Danube region.
Modern critical edition, translation, and commentary available here (p. 41-45).
Relevant bibliography:
Le Bohec, Yann. – La marine romaine et la première guerre punique. Klio 2003 85 (1) : 57-69 carte.
Harris W. V. – The development of the quaestorship, 267-81 B.C. Classical Quarterly1976 XXVI : 92-106. Abstract: There were two new quaestorships in 267, not four, as usually supposed, and they probably shared some of the duties of the quaestores urbani. Two more quaestorships were added for Sicily and Sardinia, and in 197 the total was probably raised to ten, a figure maintained until Sulla. The quaestores classici of 267 probably represented a tightening of Roman control in Italy.
RRC 262/1. I had a little itch in my brain that elephants wearing bells were some how familiar to me when I included the coin below in my previous post.
ETRURIA. Val di Chiana. Ca. 208–207 BC. SNG ANS 36. SNG Morcom 44. HN Italy 69.
I realize it must have been because of the bell on the elephant head on RRC 262/1. The bell must have been a prominent feature on war elephants to make it onto the coin iconography…
addendum. HN Italy 2666 is an AE coin of ~18mm diameter with a bust of Nike on the obverse and an elephant with a bell on the reverse. Trunk curves outwards, not inward. The mint and date is unknown. Two more specimens are in Copenhagen.
Update 6/6/2014: Elephants with Bells also seems to be a Bacrian motif:
8/22/16: and Indo-Greek
Update 4/11/18: So funny to learn while I was observing all this some one else what writing an article on it!
Historia Numorum Italy no. 448 is listed with just one legend PROBOM. (P is actually closer to a Π with a short right leg. Note open form of R. These features consistent throughout). A specimen with clearly this legend is illustrated in the plates. Most of the specimens in trade are from different dies with variant readings:
PROBVM
PRBOVM
PRBOM
The meaning of the legend is unclear. HN Italy suggests it comes from probus, meaning valid. Although the basic meaning ‘honest, good’ seems fine to me too.
It is connected to a similar legend at Beneventum on a type, the imagery of which is a mirror image of RRC 15/1 (HN Italy 440):
SAMNIUM, Beneventum . 265-240 BC. Æ 20mm (7.03 gm). BENVEN-TOD, laureate head of Apollo left / PR-O-P-OM, horse prancing right; pentagram above. SNG ANS -; BMC Italy pg. 68, 1; Sambon 193; SNG Morcom -; Laffaille -. Image from CNG.
The correct resolution of the legend may be aided by consideration of the variant spellings observed.
Beneventum became a Latin colony in 268 and Suessa in 313. These coins are associated with the First Punic War. Hercules wrestling the Nemean Lion is a common enough artistic theme, known especially at the mint of Heraclea Lucaniae and occasionally at Tarentum.
Addendum. I wasn’t really happy with the probum meaning ‘approved’ as it seemed a strange thing to me to write on a coin. Out of keeping with typical legends (ethnics, magistrates, mint marks, the very occasional labeling of the image). I even tried to convince myself Probus could be an epithet or title for Mercury or something. I didn’t manage. Just a red herring. But … then I remembered the inscriptions on the Egadi rams of a roughly contemporary date.
We’ll known more once the inscriptions are published on there own, but for now the use of the probo, probare, probavi on the rams is enough to let me think probum on the coin is more plausible than I first thought.
[Disturbingly, if you google image search, ‘Beneventum Apollo Coin’, the first image that returns of the coin is hosted on some satanic-esque website obsessed with pentagrams. Reminded me of a time a student of mine unwittingly submitted a project full of images from some awful white power website. Appropriation of the past to support modern ideologies is a dangerous thing, especially on the intertubes.]
1) I hate the use of the word ‘real’ in the sense of ‘real world’ or ‘real job’. It is invariably used to trivialize the work and position of the individual who is not partaking in someone else’s definition of real. It implies one’s life occupation is a delusion without value, usually meaning monetary value. I once even had a senior administrator at my own college tell me my department ‘was the happiest la-la-land of academia’. He meant it as a compliment to my managerial skills, I think. While academics are used to hearing the phrase ‘real world’ in anti-intellectual contexts, I suspect its also a classist sentiment. One that disparages the labor of those who do work different from one’s own. The handy thing about it as a slur is that its perfectly acceptable to say to someone’s face AND its flexible enough to be used against those both above and below the speaker on the socio-economic scale.
2) I hate drafting. I’m usually a write it once and never change it kind of gal. I sweat over each damn sentence. The blog has effectively tricked me into drafting. I just had an awesomely productive writing morning for the book, largely inspired by various disparate posts written scattered over many months. No one sentence in the book draft matches the blog and yet boy it was easier to bang out those words with the posts up in front of me.
Crawford’s suggestion of a Metapontum as the mint for the first Roman didrachm is very much out of favour. Here’s the relevant footnote in RRC vol. 1 p. 46 n. 9 third (!) paragraph:
Here’s Vagi in the brilliant new Essays Russo 2014 (p. 80):
And so we find Russo’s son also following his father in the catalog of the JD collection part II:
We have decided to share Rutter’s opinion who in Historia Numorum Italy attributes these coins to the Naples mint contrary to Crawford who assigns them to the mint of Metapontum. That said however, we have decided to refer to the coin as an obol and not as a litra as suggested by both Rutter and Crawford. The reasons for this decision are very simple: we obviously agree that this coin belongs to Crawford’s series 13, which was intended for trades with Magna Grecia. On this basis, it seems only logical that we refer to it as an obol and not a litra. Its weight and its general appearance are consistent with coaeval obols of Camapianian mints such as: Fistelia, Peripoloi Pitanai and Allifae, which most probably were circulating along with this coin.
JD collection of Roman Republican Coins. Obol, Neapolis 320-300, AR 0.66 g. Head of Mars r., wearing Corinthian helmet; behind, oak spray (?). Rev. Head of horse r.; behind, corn ear and before, ROMANO downwards. Fiorelli Annali 1846, p. 23 and pl. I, fig, 29. Garrucci pl. 77, 18. Bahrfeldt RN 1900, pp. 33-34, 31 and pl. 26, 1 (possibly this obverse die). Sydenham 2. Crawford 13/2. Historia Numorum Italy 267.
So I got thinking about this because of how Norba borrows Metapontum’s type for its obol during the Pyrrhic War:
HN Italy 248
There is only one of these coins known, but it comes with a good archaeological provenance. The original report is online here. And also here.
L. Cesano, Monete rinvenute negli scavi di Norba, in NSA 1904, 423-426
PANVINI–ROSATI, FRANCO. Moneta unica di Norba. In: Archaeologia Classica, Vol. 11 (1959), pp. 102-107, pi. 40.
Vagi makes a very plausible explanation for the corn-ear with the horse head to allude to the Festival of the October Horse, a harvest festival in honor of Mars. Metapontum is a red herring for the Roman series, but what does Metapontum have to do with the Latin obols? Why do we find her type borrowed on the coins of Norba?
Also RRC 13/2 as an obol perhaps helps set a precedence that influenced the denominational choice for the Latin mints (Norba, Signia, and Alba Fucens) of the Pyrrhic War.
Combination of two masks and a wild boar’s head. Roman ringstone, 100-300 Cornelian. 1,1 x 1,6 cm. Inventory number: I1538. Thorvaldsens Museum.
Sometimes I tell myself I’m too obsessed with the connection between gems and coins. And then one of my hunches pays off and the obsession comes back full swing. In case the above image doesn’t set off exciting alarm bells in your head, allow me to remind you what the coins of Signia, a Latin Colony, during the Pyrrhic War looked like:
Latium, Signia. Obol circa 280-275, AR 0.64 g. Head of Mercury r., wearing petasus; below neck, dolphin r. Rev. Mask composed of Silenus head l., and boar’s head r.; below, SEIC. Campana CNAI 1b (this reverse die). BMC 3 (this reverse die). Historia Numorum Italy 343 var.
Let me assure you that the gem above is by no means a one off.
Beazley Archive Reference Number: 716; Description: Heads of a BOAR and a man conjoined. Inscribed in Greek THIE. Current Collection: Walters Art Museum, Baltimore: 42.1070; Previous Collections: Story-Maskelyne, M.H.: The Marlborough Gems (1870): no. 716. Material: Jasper
And based on descriptions without images the Thorvaldsens Museum has a number more similar gems, Inventory numbers: I1537, I1539, I1722, I1536. The last two are of particular interest as they are glass pastes which suggests the image had resonance with members of a variety of different social classes.
This particular type even made the BBC!
From a 30 March 2010 article ‘Guernsey, the Roman Empire’s trading post’. Image links to article.
What the heck does it mean? Was it the badge of some particular noble? Or like grylloi is it a humorous, apotropaic emblem? Or a philosophic meditation on the theme of man and beast? Or all these things? or something else entirely?
OR! the penny drops! Is it a visual pun?! Signia in Latin is also the plural form of the neuter noun meaning: standard, seal, sign, signal, proof, indication from the verb signo to mark, stamp, designate, sign, seal. The type chosen is a very very common seal type. [This is why I blog by the way. It took writing the whole damn post for that penny to drop and me to make the obvious connection.] This is a really exciting idea to me. Name puns are all over Roman Republican coinage to show its early early adoption is Latium is especially good. I think it provides a missing link of sorts between the ideas I explored in this earlier post discussing Republican habits, the Abdera series, and Timeaus. [I’ve talked about puns a lot on this blog, but that post is the best of the lot I think.]
For follow-up later: Henig has some clever things to say about gems usually. There are two possibly related gems (CG72 and CG 354) in the Fitzwilliam that he’s written up in his 1994 catalogue. Must get those pages from ILL… Strangely none returned in BM, Met, or Boston MFA searches all of which have robust gem collections.
As an aside, I find it funny that Mercury on the obverse is wearing a necklace or similar band. At first I thought at first it might be an unfortunate die break, but it shows up on a different die as well, but not all of the dies. Also what the heck does Mercury have to do with dolphins? Could it have anything to do with bizarre composite deity on the coins of Bursio who has wings and a trident (RRC 352/1)? I doubt it. But finding any representation Hermes or Mercury with any nautical attributes is tricky.
Update 4/11/2014: If more canting types from Italy are sought, consider Rutter’s note at HN Italy 446, an obol of the Saunitai with a javelin head on the reverse, σαύνιον = javelin. He gives a date of c. 325.
ETRURIA. Val di Chiana. Ca. 208–207 BC. SNG ANS 36. SNG Morcom 44. HN Italy 69.
Liv Mariah Yarrow 
