Jenkins to Townley, 27th September 1786: “…have a most curious stone from the Negroni with the measures and instruments of the ancients, some of which are new.” [TY 7 / 445].

Jenkins to Townley, 22nd January 1791: “…The Marble with Architectural Instruments, & which You once desired to have, & afterwards Countermanded is Gone to Berlin…” [TY 7 / 505].

formerly in the Villa Montalto-Negroni

No I don’t have an amazing new resource to share with you, but because our fore-bearers made casts and now other museums are digitizing their cast collections it is getting easier to ‘see’ what in inside these old cabinets. I was feeling far too distant from my research and needed just some reminder of my passion for the material this morning, so I decided to look at what the Louvre database would spit out with the key term “Florence Musée archéologique”. Almost every gem is originally from the Medici collection. I was struck about how few looked ancient and how often I suspected that the ancient gems were adapted post antiquity. 

Below are the casts that I want to remember:

This first one is so close to the Felix Gem in the Ashmolean I stopped short, not identical but clearly both derive from the same original, or one from the other. (Odysseus, Palladium, Diomedes)

Here the eyes seem vaguely Ptolemaic and I have some feel it might be Republican portraiture, what I cannot decide is what the iconography is behind the head and in front as well. Thoughts?

This representation of Sol (Helios) is not a direct match for any coins, but I wanted to flag that the hair style is much closer to RRC 390/1 (76 BCE) and RRC 303/1 (109-108 BCE) than any of the later republican portrayals of Sol on republican coins . This may help with dating the intaglio.

Not a perfect match but this next one is clearly employing a similar prototype to the iconography of RRC 396/1. (athlete, athletics)

This one shares a prototype with some of the sub types of RRC 408/1 and RRC 340/1 (Piso Frugi, horse racing, circus)

Other blog posts have discussed further Medici gems.

If you happen to follow me on social media you will already know I got some awesome news today. My colleagues and I won a grant to non-invasively analyze the interior composition of a handful of Aes Grave specimens excavated from Nemi in the late 19th century. This technique lets us take multiple targeted readings at different depths and then compare different specimen. A huge advance over the pXRF surface reading and shallow drilling, this data will contextualize my other data and also allow us to ask better questions of the material. I hope we will also know more about the relationship of RRC 14 and 18.

I know many of you will have questions about the nature of the work. Below is the narrative from our grant proposal. 

---

The Cu:Pb:Sn Alloy at the Heart of Rome’s Earliest Cast Coinage

L.M. Yarrow (CUNY), W. Powell (CUNY), A. Hillier (STFC), A. Inscker (Nottingham)

Background and Context

This cultural heritage proposal seeks to determine the composition of Rome’s earliest cast coinage, called aes grave, ‘heavy bronze’. The results of our experiments will produce a more accurate picture of early monetization in the Roman economy and may confirm a new hypothesis that these unusual coins had little intrinsic value, being more akin to bitcoin than bars of bullion. This key historical case raises questions of the very nature of money itself. The standard reasoning to explain the heaviness of earliest Roman coins is that such mass was required to achieve sufficient intrinsic metal value. It has been hypothesized that the Romans adopted the tradition of northern and central Italic peoples of using crudely shaped copper alloy ingots as money and married this tradition to the design habits of the silver coins used by Greek inhabitants of southern Italy. This resulted in a heavy copper alloy coinage with fixed denominations and intrinsic value that was recognizable as money to all peoples in the Italic peninsula.

Underlying this assumption is that the Italic copper alloy ingots also had intrinsic metal value as a commodity, and so were used widely as bullion and money.  This has been called into question by metallurgical testing of archaeological finds. ^(1,2) My recent re-analysis of metrological data of these coins also suggests they are unlikely to have any significant intrinsic metal value.⁽³⁾ Accurate analysis of the bulk composition of these coins would serve to test this new hypothesis. The material from Lord Saville’s 1880s excavations at the sanctuary of Diana at Nemi is curated by Nottingham City Museums & Galleries. As a securely provenanced collection of aes grave, they will serve as the ideal specimens for such analysis.  The findings from our experiments will be contextualized with previously published data and our own data collection for specimens without archaeological provenance in other major museum collections. Besides work-to-date detailed in section III below, I have a fellowship for March 2024 to study related artifacts in Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.  All this analysis seeks to define the role of bronze in the third century BCE Roman and wider Italic economy which in turn will help us better understand the socio-economic role of all bronze objects from this period, from their military applications to their status as religious offerings, including but not limited to those headline grabbing discoveries from the Etruscan site at San Casciano dei Bagni.

Proposed Experiment

Two forms of corrosion may develop on leaded tin bronze: 1) a thin and even two-layer structure (noble patina); 2) a thicker uneven and pitted three-layer structure.^(4,5,6) In either case, weathering in the absence of Cl results in loss of Cu and an increase in Sn within the corrosion layer, and so the patina masks the true original composition from any form of surface analysis. Of even greater importance, Pb does not alloy with either Cu or Sn. Molten leaded bronze will separate into two immiscible liquids at the onset of cooling. The composition of both will evolve during crystallization, with the Pb-Sn-rich component compositionally fractionating over a greater temperature range⁽⁷⁾. Thus, it is expected that significant compositional variations and heterogeneities will be present in sizable artifacts that were not quenched upon casting. Given such compositional variation between surface and interior, neither surface analysis (e.g., pXRF) nor near-surface sampling (e.g., shallow drilling) will yield the true bulk composition of the object ^(8,9). The unique cultural heritage value means destructive techniques such as deep drilling would be unethical. Therefore, analysis of sizable Pb-Sn-bronze artifacts such as aes grave requires a non-destructive, deep-penetrating method that can document variation in composition with depth, and position. Negative muon spectrometry is ideal for this purpose.

The proposed experiment seeks to characterize the patterns of internal compositional variations within a set of the earliest aes grave (RRC 18) of varying size (denominations: 1, ¹/₃, ¹/₆). And for comparison, one ¹/₆ denomination from RRC 14, considered to be of the same approximate date. Compositional variation with distance from the outer surface of the coin is expected based on the results of the negative muon experiment of Cataldo et al. (2022)⁽⁴⁾; interior metal would have crystallized later from a more compositionally fractionated molten residuum. Additionally, gravity-driven segregation of the Cu-rich and Pb-rich melt would likely cause a gradient of increasing Pb-content of the alloy from the bottom to the top of the mold (sprue to sprue). It is also expected that compositional heterogeneities will decrease from larger to smaller objects.

The data will then be used to model the Cu-Pb-Sn ratios of the bulk recipe used to manufacture each coin, and the validity of the result will be tested with mass calculations based on the ratio of Cu:Pb:Sn, elemental densities, the mass of the coin, and its volume. Results from this test will be used to iteratively improve the composition model. Ultimately, the results from these first experiments, and the method for modelling bulk composition from depth profile data will form the basis for the design of future experiments that will investigate patterns in aes grave composition over time and value in order to determine whether the Romans had a relative consistent ‘recipe’ and allow us to assess the economic value of the raw materials used as money in this period.

Summary of Previous Beamtime or Characterization

Compositional depth profiling of a leaded-bronze artifact using muonic X-ray spectroscopy documented a gradual 17wt% decrease in Pb and a 14wt% increase in Sn from the surface to a depth of 6mm ⁽¹⁰⁾ (Fig. 1a). This clearly demonstrates the contrasting surface and interior compositions that are inherent to high-Pb bronze. In addition, we conducted pXRF analyses on aes grave from curated collections at Yale, Princeton, and Rutgers University. Subsequently, we analyzed the 56 specimens of the Nemi collection at Nottingham. The 145 analyses of corrosion-free objects (i.e., O, C, S, or Cl) indicate that surface Pb concentration decreases while Sn increases as the size of the artifact decreases (diameter and thickness) (Fig. 2a and b). It is illogical to conclude that the manufacturers of these coins chose to enrich the smallest denominations of their coins in the more valuable of the metals (Cu, Sn) and debase their largest denominations with lead. More likely, these patterns in the pXRF reflect compositional variations resulting from greater segregation of immiscible melts in larger castings with slower cooling rates.

Justification of Beamtime Request

The UKRI ISIS Muon and Neutron Facility has experience with depth profile analysis of Pb- bronze, and the artifacts that will be analyzed are curated by a UK cultural institution (Nottingham City Museums & Galleries) facilitating transport. Thus, the ISIS facility is the ideal site to undertake the work. 112 hours of beam time would allow for initial analysis of 1 in-house Pb-bronze alloy (4 analyses; c. 16 hours), as well as 24 analyses to test for compositional zoning due to gravitational settling as well as edge-to-center cooling in 4 cultural heritage objects. Given a maximum depth of 10mm, the approximately 20mm-thick ¹/₃ denomination will be used for the most detailed and complete interior characterization: 8 evenly spaced analyses through the maximum thickness at the center of the coin, beginning at a depth of 0.5mm (flip specimen half-way), and one central analysis at each of the sprue ends (10 analyses; c. 40 hours). Analysis of a 1 denomination coin (c. 20 mm thick) will investigate the maximum potential internal composition al variation: at thickest point, 1 mm and 1cm depth on each side, as well as ¼, ½ of the way through at each of the sprue ends (8 analyses; c. 32 hours). Analysis of a ¹/₆ denomination coin (c. 10 mm thick) will investigate possible homogeneity of composition in the smallest denominations: at thickest point, three analyses at depths of 1mm, ¼ depth, and at the core (3 analyses; c. 12 hours). This will be repeated on a second ¹/₆ denomination, this one from RRC 14 to compare composition of coins thought to be of similar age (3 analyses; c. 12 hours). 

¹ Baldassarri, et al. (2006). Analisi LIBS di esemplari di AES Rude… Cong. Naz. di Archeometria IV, 561-573.

² Ingo et al. (2005). Microchemical investigation of archaeological copper… . Microchimica Acta 144, 87-95.

³ Yarrow. (2023). Strangeness of Rome’s Early Heavy Bronze Coinage. In Making the Middle Republic, 103-31.

⁴ Robbiola, et al. (1998). Morphology and mechanisms … archaeological Cu-Sn alloys. Corr. Sci., 40(12), 2083-2111

⁵ Constantinides et al. (2002). Surface characterization of artificial corrosion layers … . App. Surf. Sci, 189, 90-101.

⁶ Nørgaard, H. (2017). Portable XRF on prehistoric bronze artefacts… . Open Arch., 3, 101-122.

⁷ NIST Material Measurement Laboratory. https://www.metallurgy.nist.gov/phase/solder/cupbsn.html

⁸ Burnett, et al. (1986). “Early Italian currency bars.” Italian Iron Age Artefacts in the British Museum.

⁹ Westner, et al. (2020). “…compositional and Pb isotope data of (leaded) copper-based alloys…” JAS 121, 105-204.

¹⁰ Cataldo et al. (2022). A novel non-destructive technique for cultural heritage   … negative muons. App. Sci., 12, 4237.

A favorite ritual of the AIA/SCS is to survey the book tables for material relevant to current or future research and teaching.

Teaching

After Alexander

FLOODED PASTS: UNESCO, NUBIA, AND THE RECOLONIZATION OF ARCHAEOLOGY by WILLIAM CARRUTHERS

Pre-Islamic Arabia: Societies, Politics, Cults and Identities during Late Antiquity by Valentina A. Grasso

CITY and EMPIRE in the AGE of the SUCCESSORS: URBANIZATION AND SOCIAL RESPONSE IN THE MAKING OF THE HELLENISTIC KINGDOMS by RYAN ВОЕНМ

Ancient Africa: a Global History, to 300 CE by Christopher Ehret

Sex and Gender

FERTILITY, IDEOLOGY, AND THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF REPRODUCTION AT ROME by Angela Hug

MEDICINE, HEALTH, & HEALING in the ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN 500 ВСЕ-600 СЕ a Sourcebook by KRISTI UPSON-SAIA, HEIDI MARX, & JARED SECORD (parts only but good for college library collection period)

Research

ROMA TRAVERSATA Tracing Historic Pathways through Rome by Allan Ceen [maybe relevant to Dionysius chapter on city of Rome]

THE VOICES OF THE CONSUL: THE RHETORICS OF CICERO’S DE LEGE AGRARIA I AND II by BRIAN A. KROSTENKO

Cultural Memory in Republican and Augustan Rome Edited by Martin T. Dinter and Charles Geurin [I’d have bought this on the spot but it was already sold]

The Altars of Republican Rome and Latium Sacrifice and the Materiality of Roman Religion by Claudia Moser [super relevant for contextualizing coins as votives and evolution of cult practice; another one that was sold before I saw it]

A Culture of Civil War? Bellum civile and political communication in Late Republican Rome Edited by Henning Börm, Ulrich Gotter and Wolfgang Havener [regretting not buying this one – toc in photos]

A book on spoils of which I got photos of the toc but not cover… smh

Poetics of the First Punic War by Thomas Biggs [first three chapters hyper relevant]

GABII THROUGH ITS ARTEFACTS Edited by Laura M. Banducci and Mattia D’Acri [must ILL coin chapter]

The Archaeology of Urban Life in the Ancient Akrai/Acrae, Sicily Edited by Roksana Chowaniec and Marta Fitula [ill seals chapter]

Coins and Economy in Magdala/Taricheae by BRUNO CALLEGHER

CROSSING THE POMERIUM:The Boundaries of Political, Religious, and Military Institutions from Caesar to Constantine by MICHAEL KOORTBOJIAN – only really relevant for first sections— ILL

Translations and Commentaries

XENOPHON The Shorter Writings EDITED BY GREGORY A. McBRAYER

Cicero ON DUTIES TRANSLATED WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND INDEXES BY BENJAMIN PATRICK NEWTON

CICERO, De haruspicum responsis, INTRODUCTION, TEXT, TRANSLATION, & COMMENTARY by Anthony Corbeill

LIVY The Fragments & Periochae Edited with an Introduction, Translation, & Commentary by D. S. LEVENE ***

A Commentary on Cicero De Divinatione II by ANDREW R. DYCK

SERVIUS COMMENTAIRE SUR L’ÉNÉIDE DE VIRGILE LIVRE VIII [bude]

Polybius Book 1 A Commentary David D. Phillips

General interest

Theater and SPECTACLE in THE ART OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE By KATHERINE M. D. DUNBABIN — many many lovely illustrations!

ON ROMAN RELIGION: LIVED RELIGION AND THE INDIVIDUAL IN ANCIENT ROME by JÖRG RÜPKE – short and useful

THE ALTERNATIVE AUGUSTAN AGE Edited by KIT MORRELL, JOSIAH OSGOOD, and KATHRYN WELCH

LIVING THEATRE in the ANCIENT ROMAN HOUSE: Theatricalism in the Domestic Sphere By RICHARD C. BEACHAM And HUGH DENARD

Aphrodisias XIII: Diocletian’s Edict of Maximum Prices at the Civil Basilica in Aphrodisias by Michael Crawford

Collecting and Collectors from Antiquity to Modernity, Alexandra Carpino, Tiziana D’Angelo, Maya Muratov & David Saunders (eds.) – good content on gems

PLINY’S ROMAN ECONOMY: Natural History, Innovation, and Growth by RICHARD P. SALLER

UNBOUND FROM ROME: ART AND CRAFT inA FLUID LANDSCAPE ca. 650-250 ВСЕ by JOHN NORTH HOPKINS

DI MANES, BELIEF & THE CULT OF THE DEAD

The Ancient Roman afterlife by CHARLES W. KING

SAECULUM: Defining Historical Eras in Ancient Roman thought by Paul Hay

I find this very exciting because I’ve argued elsewhere for a close relationship between the stamped black glaze pottery (vernice nera with petites estampilles) and numismatic images. I think that the potter actually press the coin into the mold and then used that mold to make these cups.

From Mabbott, Numismatic Review 1945

I assume someone between 1945 and now has decided this type was not part of C. Alius Bala’s work as a moneyer (cf. RRC 336), I’m guess Suzanne or Clive could tell me where it goes in the landscape of small Italian/Sicilian/Western Med bronzes, but mostly I don’t want to forget that it exists. And who doesn’t like a fist anyway.

I’m cheating on my extensive administrative responsibilities and teaching duties because my brain is obsessed with these tessera nummularia (see previous post to watch the development of my interest from a few random specimens in the louvre to an all out compulsion)

In many ways this is the most important one:

“Anchialus, enslaved by Lucius Sirtus, inspected the coins [for] the month of February, in the consulship of Marcus Tullius [Cicero!] and Gaius Antonius”

This is the only one out of the whole corpus to mention what is being inspected but it confirms the current predominant scholarly interpretation today that these objects were used to regulate coins in some way.

I decided to dump the data and clean it up in a proper spreadsheet. I have 151 where the date is present and legible.

While it is possible for a tag to represent almost any day in the year it is far more likely that either a fixed point of the kalends, nones, or ides will be mentioned. And by far the most common is for the payment to be made on the first of the month, and then the ides (13th or 15th of the month, an ostensible mid point).

If we look a the break down by month of surviving specimens with “kalends” as the inspection date we see January as an outlier, followed closely by April and then July.

I think we’re seeing peaks on the quarters. I’d be more confident if there was a peak at October but I’d suggest this is more an accident of survival. I also suggest January may have been the preferred date for annual payments.

Ides payments seem to be fairly evenly distributed allowing for the accidents of survival with possibly a summer ‘bump’

Stranger to me and perhaps a warning not to look too hard for patterns are all the other dates (including nones with the ‘randoms’):

Some suggest that we might have representations of this type of tag on the RR coin series

If these are illustrations of such tags used to validate payments is the bench associated with some sort of financial office? maybe a banker? Is the Olla the type of vessel used to transport or contain these payments? 

I’m agnostic about the iconography for now…

---

More thoughts and observations from the next day:

In the 172 cases where we can read the name of the person inspecting, enslaved or otherwise, not a single inspector name repeats. Even when the name is the same the gens of the enslaved is different.

The only possible exception is as follows but I believe it to be a doublet:

When one considers the gens and other names in the genitive, the enslaver(s) of the inspectors or rarely possibly an employer, the thing that really sticks out is the great diversity. There is more repetition but not much more. 107(!) names appear only once in the genitive, typically in the masculine singular, typically the gens, but sometimes the cognomen, and sometimes with a praenomen abbreviation as well.

Gens appearing twice

Antoni, Caecili, Canini, Corneli, Fabi, Iuni, Licini, Novi, Valeri, Volcaci

Gens appearing more than twice

Fulvi (5 times); Hostili (3 times); Iuli (5 times), Petilli (4 times), Pomponi (3 times)

The only family names to appear in the plural are Bibulorum and Curtiorum. Here we may assume that the enslaved individual was owned by more than one family member.

We also have likely female enslavers attested: Attiae, Rupiliae, Tragoniae (only time this name occurs!)

Then there are names that seem to reflect corporate bodies:

soc(iorum) fer(rariarum)

sociorum (twice)

This great variety of names makes me lean away from associating the names on these tessera with ‘banking families’ an idea promoted by Wiseman, and thus a meaningful connection with moneyers. Rather I think it is more likely these families may be involved with a wide range of business transactions, but specifically transactions that are likely to be re occuring on an annual, quarterly, or monthly basis. Rent or interest on loans both come to mind. I’m sure their are other possibilities.

Even when names appear multiple times where dates are attested there is little to no suggestion that one individual or one generation of a family is likely with the exception of the Petilli. 

Fulvi dates: -17, -48, (no year), -60, (no year)

Hostili dates: 5, 32, -71

Iuli dates: -32, -25, 39, 83

Petilli dates: -56, -54, -46, 11

Pomponi dates: 11, (no date), (no date)

This analysis helped me identify another likely duplicate:

“Philodamus, enslaved by Junius, inspected [this] seven days before the Ides of April in the consulship of Publius Lentulus and Gnaeus Orestes” Louvre

earlier posts on tessera nummularia

Addendum.

61 CE

typically these tessera are dated to the republican era but they do continue later.

I cannot read the date but everything else is clear: “Hermes, enslaved by Vibius, inspected [this] on the ___ August, in the consulship of Paterculus and Salinator” (Louvre)

The suffect consuls:

Cn. Pedanius Fuscus Salinator

L. Velleius Paterculus

I think this inspection tag may have been erased and re used. Many of the scratches look like they might be underlying letters. 

44 BCE

Ok. This one is extremely cool.

” Philogenos, enslaved by Alfius, inspected [this] on the Ides of Sextilis, in the consulship of M. Antony and P. Dolabella.” (Louvre)

This Dolabella replaced Caesar as consul after his murder! Sextilis is the earlier name for the month we now call August.

A puzzle.

This should resolve as a pair of consuls but I just cannot make out any likely year… (Louvre)

52 BCE.

“Philargurus, enslaved by Aconius, inspected [this] one day before the Kalends of May, in the third [sole] consulship of Gnaeus Pompeius” (BnF)

The BnF has a total 94 of these lovely objects. 

The BM just 4.

Epigraphik-Datenbank  Clauss / Slaby records 181 examples,: search

inscription genus / personal status:

“tesserae nummulariae”

Besides what you see on this map, there is one more find spot in Sicily and one in N. Africa. Otherwise it is a largely Italian phenomenon, but with no evidence yet for their use in the southern regions. small: 1 find, medium: 2 finds, large: 3 or more finds.

Here’s a quick and dirty histogram by decade of the 141 specimens with secure dates in EDCS database (see above for link).

The phenomenon of these tags goes back at least to the mid 90s. None are known from the years of the social war but they are attested both under Cinna’s regime and Sulla’s dictatorship. The greatest density of known specimens date between Cicero’s consulship and Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon. There are little to no specimens from the height of civil unrest between Julius Caesar’s murder and the being of the Augustan principate. There is steady even growing usage throughout the Augustan era and through the early Julio Claudians seeming drop off in the Age of Claudius with perhaps greater usage in the Flavian period.

Of course this picture could also be accidents of survival to some degree.

---

from EDCS on ILLRP 1047:

P(h)ilodamus / Iuli / sp(ectavit) a(nte) d(iem) III K(alendas) Feb(ruarias) / M(arco) Val(erio) Cn(aeo) Do(mitio)

comment It is very puzzling, because in the first several months of 53 BC there were no consuls in office, since the elections were delayed as 4 candidates competed for election: M. Valerius Messalla (Rufus), Cn. Domitius Calvinus, M. Aemilius Scaurus, and C. Memmius. During this long interregnum the tesserae nummulariae were dated by the interreges, not by the pair of consuls, whose names could not have been known until after they had been elected. See EDCS-24700159. Hence I suggest that this tessera nummularia was dated on 30 January 32 BC, at a time when C. Sosius had been deposed from the consulate and his place had been taken by M. Valerius Messalla, but Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus was still officially a consul. Later in the year he would be succeeded by L. Cornelius. (John D. Morgan III)

I’m tucked up in a sunny bay window on a comfy chaise lounge. The blanket I’m crocheting for my youngest daughter is now large enough to cover me as I work the edges. So why in good heavens am I making a blog post?

Well I have LibriVox on. Specifically I’m enjoying listen to a very soporific reading Livy book 23.

And I cannot help thinking that Pacuvius Calavius seems very much a Julius Caesar or August type figure. He presents himself as clement, maintains the structure of government while presenting himself as the savior of both the people and the elite, all while being coming a de facto autocrat. I wonder if this is a case of Capua being “good to think with”. The emphasis on Pacuvius’ marriage connections are Rome equally curious—Claudii and Livii!

It doesn’t mean the man isn’t ‘real’, but rather I wonder how much Livy enjoyed meditating on how the episode paralleled politics of his own day…

Text link

—

Other thoughts:

Is the cannibal accusation against Hannibal just a trope about what it means to be uncivilized, or is it possibly related to antisemitic tropes? The latter seems unlikely. The accusation is found in fuller form in Polybius

One scholar has speculated that the origins of the antisemitic trope goes back to Alexandria and Apion and conflation with the Isis cult, but this seems a stretch.

—

The whole banquet scene and then back alley conversation between the younger and elder Pacuvius Calavius about whether to murder Hannibal seems ripped from the stage: an unknowable yet dramatic moment on which history turns. Makes me think of Wiseman’s hypothesis that much historical knowledge at Rome derives from theater productions.

—

“obtaining the necessary permission to mount his horse, he published an edict that all who had been guilty of capital offences or who were in prison for debt and were willing to serve under him would by his orders be released from punishment and have their debts cancelled. 6000 men were raised in this way, and he armed them with the spoils taken from the Gauls and which had been carried in the triumphal procession of C. Flaminius. He then started from the City with 25,000 men.”

I am so confused about where these 6000 men were… the Romans didn’t go in for mass imprisonment, debt bondage (nexum) had been abolished. I having a hard time imagining physically where these men lived and under what conditions…

—

“the rest returned in safety to Praeneste with their commanding officer (praetore), M. Anicius, who had formerly been a notary (scriba). To commemorate the event his statue was set up in the forum of Praeneste, wearing a coat of mail with a toga over it and having the head veiled. A bronze plate was affixed with this inscription: “Marcus Anicius has discharged the vow he made for the safety of the garrison of Casilinum.” The same inscription was affixed to the three images (signis) standing in the temple of Fortune. … There is more obscurity as to what happened to the Perusians, as there is no light thrown upon it by any monument of their own or any decree of the senate.”

I wonder the material of the statue? Can we say it was not bronze because of the inscription medium is explicitly mentioned? Why three signis in the same temple? Are the truly images? Or could he have dedicated his standards? The word is ambiguous. It could mean many v different types of dedication from a statue to a panel painting. The toga is an interesting detail as the passage includes a refusal of Roman citizenship by the Praenestine troops in favor of their local citizenship. We tend to think of it as a ‘sign’ of Roman citizenship, which Anicius might have as praetor… but is it also the garb of other Latin people? The passage made me pause because I tend to think of Livy emphasizing his written sources not monuments but his concern to mention the lack of contemporary documentation for the Perusians is note worthy…

10.27: Ecbatana is an exception. This city is situated in the northern part of Media and commands that portion of Asia which borders on the Maeotis and Euxine.  It had always been the royal residence of the Medes and is said to have greatly exceeded all the other cities in wealth and the magnificence  of its buildings. It lies on the skirts of Mount Orontes and has no wall, but possesses an artificial citadel the fortifications of which are of wonderful strength. Beneath this stands the palace, regarding which I am in doubt whether I should go into details or keep silence. For to those who are disposed to recount marvellous tales and are in the habit of giving exaggerated and rhetorical reports of certain matters this city affords an admirable theme, but to such as approach with caution all statements which are contrary to ordinary conceptions it is a source of doubt and difficulty. The palace, however, is about seven stades in circumference, and by the magnificence of the separate structures in it conveys a high idea of the wealth of its original founders. For the woodwork was all of cedar and cypress, but no part of it was left exposed, and the rafters, the compartments of the ceiling, and the columns in the porticoes and colonnades were plated with either silver or gold, and all the tiles were silver. Most of the precious metals were stripped off in the invasion of Alexander and his Macedonians, and the rest during the reigns of Antigonus and Seleucus the son of Nicanor,  but still, when Antiochus reached the place, the temple of Aene alone had the columns round it still gilded and a number of silver tiles were piled up in it, while a few gold bricks and a considerable quantity of silver ones remained. From all the objects I have mentioned sufficient was collected to coin money with the king’s effigy amounting to very nearly four thousand talents.

I wonder if metallurgical testing could confirm this source for Antiochus III’s bulllion? Perhaps easiest would be to compare gold from the excavations of site with some of his surviving gold. Silver might be harder.