I decided that I’d written too much about the pretty pictures.  So as my “break” from edits today I read a chapter about whether hoard evidence can tell us if their was a monetary crisis between 54-44 BC.  Basically, it was trying to get a handle on the money supply and how to estimate coin loss.   One the most striking statements was the “Even after thirty years of shrinking the output of the eighties still made up more than a third of the money supply in circulation in 50 BCE.”  It got me thinking about whether or not I could reproduce the scholarship.  Did the numbers make sense? Where were they coming from?  How could I ever explain that to any one?  I’ve done a hoard and thus I felt I knew hoards but I haven’t ever really done HOARDS plural in my own research.  Where to start?  To my incredible delight Kris Lockyear and the ANS have teamed up to make Crawford’s research and all Lockyear’s additional work digitizing new material and Crawford’s files accessible TO EVERYONE — CHRR Online.  No digital glass ceiling here!  Just beautiful, beautiful data.  I’m just getting started navigating it and trying to figure out its potential.  Thus I picked a hoard with early coins, Herdade da Milia, but I found it by searching by coin type not for the specific hoard.  The coin up top is the type of the earliest identified coin in this hoard (not the exact specimen).  The latest identified coin type is of this type (again not the exact specimen):

[A wild image I’m going to resist writing about.] This dates to 113 BC-112 BC and if you click on the hoard link above there are some fun distribution graphs on a time line.  That said the official closing date of this hoard is listed at 31 BC.  That’s a head scratcher…  Until one notes that there are 16 unidentified denarii in the hoard that could have been made any time between 211 B.C. – 31 B.C., the whole run of the republican series.  We do need to allow for some of those 16 coins to be later than 112 BC, but the distribution of the coins in the hoard needs to also have some weight.  When using this type of hoard in analyses we should begin by comparing it to others closing in the last decade or so of the 2nd century BC.

I came home in awe of the presenter’s PowerPoint skills.  It was a visually stunning two hour talk and was googling around for an image of a fun trishekel minted by the Carthaginians in Spain, the one with the diademed head and a ship prow.  I thought I’d write about that.   No reason other than it captivated my imagination.  But in my digging, I ended up here.  I was about to move on as I’m trying to avoid images not in museum collections on this blog as much as possible, but I was struck by the similarity of the reverse of HN Capua 494:

 

To a coin of about 56 BC minted by Sulla’s son (same series as the first coin in the last coin post):

So I started searching for Selene or Luna on Roman Republican coins to find the Faustus coin and any relevant predecessors.  The Faustus coin was entered as Diana so didn’t appear, but it did return the lead coin above–a spectacular image of Luna appearing Sulla in a Dream, a story known from Plutarch.  The BOOK as approved by my publisher and series editor ends in 49 BCE.  This epiphany coin playing on the Endymion/Selene iconography dates to 44 BC.  That said, it directly contextualizes the Diana in a biga coin by demonstrating a contemporary awareness of the Plutarch narrative.  I think I better include it.  The Capua coin is also likely to make an appearance as it strengthens Crawford’s suggestion that the divinity on the coin should be linked this passage:

“It was while Sulla was ascending Mount Tifata that he had encountered Gaius Norbanus. After his victory over him he paid a vow of gratitude to Diana, to whom that region is sacred, and consecrated to the goddess the waters renowned for their salubrity and water to heal, as well as all the lands in the vicinity. The record of this pleasing act of piety is witnessed to this day by an inscription on the door of the temple, and a bronze tablet within the edifice.”

Mount Tifata directly overlooks Capua.  The temple of Diana Tifatina still stands, at least in part, as the Basilica di Sant’Angelo in Formis.  I find no need to choose between the Plutarch or the Velleius narrative.  Diana, Luna, Selene, Artemis, we are still firmly in the realm of moon goddesses.  There is no meaningful iconographic distinction in the coins.

 

 

 

 

I sat in on a seminar on Cistophoric Coinage today.  I had learned most of what was presented along the way or had read about it in books, but there is something so nice in being talk through a topic, show the pictures, and handling the coins.  I creates grooves in ones mind and one sees the image anew.  Some of what I saw got me thinking about the coin above.  Not that it looks anything like a Cistophoric coinage.  Look at the reverse (“tails” side).  (I’ve turned it around.)

On the bottom left corner of this is image is something called an aplustre, the stern decoration of an ancient ship:

The coin is made by Sulla’s son, Faustus, who at the time of its manufacture was quite close to Pompey and these images are widely accepted as celebrating Pompey’s various accomplishments with the aplustre representing his clearing the seas of pirates.  That’s not controversial.  It’s just that before this aplustre aren’t known on the republican series.  There are plenty of aplustre on various greek coinages.  For example its often on the observe (“heads” side) the coins of Sinope (e.g. SNGuk_0901_1463)

Or even better this beauty:

But, sitting in the lecture today I was struck by how prominent (at least to my eye) the decoration on the bow case of the typical cistophori seemed to resemble an aplustre.

Here’s one that looks more like a bow case:

But many look more like this:

or like this:

Stylized bow case or an actual aplustre?  I don’t know.  Is there any reason for naval symbolism on late Attalid coinage?  I do think that many ancient viewers would see an apulstre before they saw a bow case. I’m not the first to think this.  The BMC catalogue recorded the image as an aplustre, but the description has fallen out of favor along the way.  Want a look at the whole group? This is a good starting place.  So does it relate to Faustus’ coin probably not through an sort of intentional symbolicalism, but cistophori might have been just about the most common aplustre type of coin imagery the creators and uses of the coins may have handled.

***

Both of the bibliographical difficulties from earlier have been cleared up!  Thank goodness for academic friends.