adventures in my head
So I wish I has a slightly better picture of this Capuan type (above) to set next to this Roman uncia (39/5):
They share detailed similarities right down to the rendering of the turrets, the necklace and drapery. There is another related Capuan type as well, but it’s of a small denomination and has fewer parallels:
I’ve blogged about the problems with Roman coin and its interpretation previously.
Update 1-28-23: Please do not cite this post. My published views on this topic can be found in my 2021 article (full unformatted text; publisher’s link).
This post is dedicated to the most estimable Prof. Kellogg, who has taught many to always listen to the sacred chickens.
These fabulous currency bars appear in many a PowerPoint presentation to illustrate the Roman practice of divination prior to battle via the consumption of grain by sacred chickens. If the birds eat, the gods are happy for the Romans to engage in combat. The most famous incident is the Sea Battle of Drepana (249BC) when Claudius Pulcher is said to have been so enraged that the birds wouldn’t eat that he cast them into the sea, saying: ‘If they won’t eat, let them drink!’. Anyway, great story and thanks to this excellent account by another blogger, I’ve got no need to review the sources here.
The idea that the bars show sacred chickens is only loosely endorsed by Crawford, who with uncharacteristic ambivalence, records the type as ‘two chickens facing each other and apparently eating; between, two stars’. He is more definite in vol. 2, p. 218:
The Callimachus epigram is of interest:
φησὶν ὅμεστήσας Εὐαίνετος （οὐ γὰρ ἔγωγε
γινώσκω） νίκης ἀννί μετῆς ἰδίης
ἀγκεῖσθαι χάλκειον ἀλέκτορα Τυνδαρίδηισι:
πιστεύω Φαίδρου παιδὶ Φιλοξενίδεω. (Greek from Perseus)
This ἀλέκτωρ isn’t a sacred chicken, but a cock! A symbol of virility and bellicosity. Look again at the currency bars above, those birds have some impressive combs and plumage, visible even with corrosion on the bars. The kicker is when we look at the pattern of coin iconography at Roman colonies and allied communities struck in the 1st Punic War, notice the combination of star and cock:
There are also coins of this same type from Caiatia (HN Italy 433) and Telesia (HN Italy 457). Discussion can be found in Crawford’s Coinage and Money (1985), p. 47. They all seem to be carved by a single die engraver and I’d not be surprised to find obverse die links. As a group they are all are overstruck by Neapolis coins from the 250s (Taliercio III,a; cf. discussion by Burnett and Crawford 1998 in essays for M. Jessop Price).
Anyway, the iconographic choice on the currency bars probably has less to do with religious ritual and more to do with selecting a symbol of military prowess. The head-down, two cock rendering of the motif probably has more to do with the design challenges of the oblong bar. The two birds echo the double design of the other side.
And, just by-the-by. the Latin for chicken, as in sacred chicken, is pullus, which is well distinguished from the gallus, or cock.
Update 4/25/16:
Notice the stance of these two fighting cocks and the imperial eagle above.
This is a didrachm of one of Rome’s colonies, Suessa Aurunca. This type is usually dated to the time of 1st Punic War. The colony had been established in 313 BC as part of the Samnite Wars (Livy 9.28). The place makes little mark on the literary narrative, appearing in such sleepy contexts as Cato’s recommendation on where to get a wagon or a mill.
The type is identified as a Dioscurus, i.e. either Castor or Pollux without his brother. My first impression is that it looked rather like a desultor to me.
This got me wondering what we actually know about desultores. Less than you might think, I can assure you! And many of our references are metaphorical (e.g. Cicero, Pro Murena 57). There are only about 13 references in Latin literature. The only certain testimony we have of their performance is during Julius Caesar’s triumphal games, and here they seem to be performances by elite youth (Suet. Iul. 39). That they show up on the republican series more than once suggests they were a significant feature of Roman religious festivals or other celebrations, but which and when is up for debate. Perhaps my favorite reference is their use in a piece of Augustan era Roman jurisprudence by Labeo preserved in the Justinian digest (19.5.20).
What about the Suessa coin above? Dioscurus or desultor? The confusion is more understandable when we look at this passage from Hyginus:
LXXX. CASTOR: Idas and Lynceus, sons of Apharesu from Messene, had as promised brides Phoebe and Hilaira, daughters of Leucippus. Since these were most beautiful maidens – Phoebe being a priestess of Minerva, and Hilaira of Diana – Castor and Pollux, inflamed with love, carried them off. But they, since their brides-to-be were lost, took to arms to see if they could recover them. Castor killed Lynceus in battle; Idas, at his brother’s death, forgot both strife and bride, and started to bury his brother. When he was placing the bones in a funeral monument, Castor intervened, and tired to prevent his raising the monument, because he had won over him as if he were a woman. In anger, Idas pierced the thigh of Castor with the sword he wore. Others say that as he was building the monument he pushed it on Castor and thus killed him. When they reported this to Pollux, he rushed up and overcame Idas in a single fight, recovered the body of his brother, and buried it. Since, however, he himself had received a star from Jove [Zeus], and one was not given to his brother, because Jove said that Castor and Clytemnestra were of the seed of Tyndareus, while he and Helen were children of Jove, Pollux begged that he be allowed to share his honor with his brother. This was granted him. [From this comes the expression “redeemed by alternate death”; and even the Romans preserve the practice. When they send out bareback riders, one man has two horses, and a cap on his head, and leaps from one horse to the other, just as Pollux takes turns with his brother.]
Thus, at least to Augustan era eyes, confusing the iconography of the Dioscuri and Desultores was no surprise. Back to the mid third century. I think it unlikely to have a Dioscurus without his brother and without another identifying mark like the star. The palm branch is agonistic imagery and there is no reason that the coin can’t be an agonistic type.
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I find myself surprised that the coins of Latin colonies are not more discussed in standard accounts of early Roman coinage. In some ways the coins of Suessa, at least in the bronze seem to form a missing link of sorts between Rome and Neapolis, producing significant numbers of Apollo/man-faced bull coins that circulated with Neapolis coins [HN Italy 450] and the overstriking at Neapolis with this type of the new design of Minerva (Roma!?) and cock (symbol of fighting prowess, bravery, like a fighting cock or perhaps of Mercury?) [HN Italy 449]. All this musing is a spin off of my reading: “A hoard of bronze coins of the 3rd century BC found at Pratica di mare (Rome)” by Maria Cristina Molinari in Proceedings to the XIV International Numismatic Congress, Glasgow 2009 (31 August – 4 September, (ed. N. HOLMES), Glasgow 2011
Update 3/28/18:
Desultores are pretty popular on intaglios too… Notice the close link to the coin type.
Fürtwangler 1896:
So I was looking at the Neapolis coins that served as prototypes for the earliest coins in the name of Rome. And, Apollo has a very flippy hairdo of a not terribly typical type. Here’s another to prove I’m not making this up:
That flip was feeling familiar. And not from just the Roman type (RRC 1/1):
Here’s a link to one more of these. Anyway. It struck me that that hair flip is visually quite related to the neck flap that appears on Roma’s helmet on certain early types like these:
Or to a lesser extent on these earlier bronzes (not to mention Rome’s first silver piece with bearded Mars and Horse’s Head probably also minted at Neapolis, modern Naples):
But that’s clearly not the direction of influence. The culprit must be the pegasi of Corinth that became so common in S Italy at the end of the 4th century BC:
The interesting iconographic borrowing isn’t really the Roma helmets, but the Neapolis (and soon-to-be-Roman) Apollo who gets his flip and snaky tendrils by way of Athena’s Corinthian manifestation.
Update 4 March 2014: Check out images of Roman types at Nick Molinari’s site, note especially the image of the RRC 2/1, known from only one specimen.
So I was happy to find today that there was in fact an update to Crawford’s 1985 map:
This is newer map was published in 2004 by Diana Neri:
It broadens the picture some and removes other disputed finds. The great shame is that it still doesn’t give a picture of any Illyrian finds… I was happy to see that the find spot of the ANS specimen above could be located on both maps!
So I was skimming the ANS catalogue trying to collect my thoughts about the Italian context for early Roman coinage. Most of the examples of cast coinage from non-Roman mints seems comfortably familiar. Wheels, Tridents, Anchors, Clubs are all motifs found at Rome and elsewhere. I particularly like the animals, roosters and sleeping dogs especially. But then I came across this specimen above: “Female Head in Murex Shell”. So different! Even if the other side, a Pegasus, is by contrast strikingly familiar in a numismatic context. Anyway the unexpected-thing-in-a-shell motif reminded me of course of our discussion of gem stone themes, earlier. It certainly fits that motif well.
The British Museum also have a good selection of this type of gem. Note especially the Mule coming out of the murex shell.
Postscript 5 March 2014. There is no image of that mule coming out of a shell on the BM site, but I just wonder if it isn’t more likely to be an ass. The ass is known for its generous male genital endowment and Henig argues that the shell is a symbol of a female sexual organs. You see why I wonder about it being a mule… Anyway, in further support of Henig’s fertility theory of the shell motif, there is the other BM specimen (illustrated) where two rabbits issue forth from the shell.
Postscript 19 Jan 2021. I see it noted in a catalogue that there are known renaissance forgeries of this type.
A week of archaeological sites was a lovely break from writing. Yesterday and today have just been reading literature on file and looking over notes for the next chapter. I thought I’d throw up this coin (HN Italy 2013) and Crawford’s 2002 comments:
From: M.H. Crawford, “Provenances, Attributions, and Chronology of Some Early Italian Coinages,” CH IX (2002), pg. 274.
I’m always nostalgic about this type. I have strong memories of the first time I ‘found’ it in the old Ashmolean coin room and how much I loved bringing students in to see it and talk about its relationship to Roman types (RRC 28/3):
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My favorite line out of this article of Crawford is certainly:
“It is no good simply lying in one’s bath and thinking that such-and-such an issue looks rather nice in such-and-such a year…”
I never dare do such a thing, but I did read this just as I was thinking how nice a bath sounded on a cold rainy Istanbul afternoon. He startled me into keeping at my computer. No bad thing.
The other Crawfordian gem of today’s readings was pretty much all of his 2009 article on aes signatum. Just to give a bit of the flavor, it begins “The term aes signatum seems to be taking an unconscionable time dying” and contains a choice observation about “typical Anglo-Saxon insouciance about anything written in German, or even in French” followed by a pointed suggestion that in this case “maybe the insouciance was justified”. (SNR 88 (2009): 195-197).
This specimen has two clear impressions on it. I suspect it is just double struck but I wanted to put a note to myself to see if it might in fact be an overstrike. It’s an extra interesting specimen as it has a fixed provenance Capalbio, Italy, 1954 (RRCH 258).
This morning I started weeping as I read about the Agonalia.
Simon Price was an amazing scholar, a brilliant teacher and one of most kind and humane men I’ve ever known. He gave me my first teaching job. Back summer term of 1997 I had a series of undergraduate tutorials with him on Roman religion. I’d been to his lectures the previous term and was in awe of all the rich materials, tidbits of evidence from here and there he marshaled together into a captivating narrative, a narrative that showed something of all the questions left to be asked. He’d stand by the window in his black robe and look out of the room as he talked, making sense of the patchwork quilt of sources he’d assembled on a single handout.
The tutorials were good, but it was summer and Oxford was full of distractions. I found the way of thinking about the history of religion, very different from reading Polybius. The Isis essay was fine, a novelty really, but boy did I struggle the week on Ovid’s Fasti. He wanted me to answer the question what use is this poem to the historian. I thought I’d never read anything quite so dull.
This morning I started by reading the Fasti. I love every bit of it. Like a sibylline book, every time I read it, it seems new again and perfectly relevant to my project at hand. I never seem to be able to see or understand or remember a passage of it until the moment I need it. Simon was right, of course. He tried to teach me to read it. At least I got there eventually.
I regret most fervently never writing to him before he passed away about what he meant to me. Or just to say thank you. If there is someone you should write to, trust me it will be better to do it now, than redraft the letter over and over again in your mind for all the years to come.
One shouldn’t really talk about those Fonteian coins as I was doing yesterday without adding in this coin of Q. Lutatius Cerco (quaestor, but whose quaestor?). It was minted between the two other issues with full ship reverses. It is given by Crawford a historical not legendary interpretation. It’s seen as a celebration of the navel victory of C. Lutatius Catulus in 241 BC. It clearly inspired by the first Fonteian coin and in turn inspires the design of the second. The element it adds to the design are the overlapping shields above the oars. This is a feature also seen on sculptural reliefs. The reason this seems important to me is that the supposed doliolum of symbolic importance on the stern of the second Fonteian coin, looks to me as just another shield added for decoration:
On some specimens like this one that haven’t been rubbed smooth it even seems to have the same line decoration. I’ve not been able to find a parallel of a shield placed in this position on a ship depicted in other media. (Largely because looking for one is a distraction from the book!)
I should have also brought the Lutatius coin into my previous discussion of prow stems.
Postscript. Do those two big stars on Roma’s helmet recall the dioscuri/penates? Notice the stars over the Penates heads on Mn. Fonteius’ coin.
Update 2/12/14:
Notice the dioscuri caps in front of the prows on this rather rare variation on the standard design of the as. There is a victory palm above. Perhaps further evidence that there is some association between navel victory (victories?) and the Dioscuri?
Update 4/29/14: Compare the placement of the rear shield on this representation:
Link to Getty Cast of Roman Bireme without a stern shield but with a similar stern terminus.
Liv Mariah Yarrow 