Oller Guzmán, Joan, Oriol Olesti Vila, Jordi Morera Camprubí, and Gertrud Platz-Horster. “Three Roman Republican Seal-Rings Discovered in the Eastern Pyrenees and Their Significance.” European Journal of Archaeology, 2021, 1–20. doi:10.1017/eaa.2021.5.

Cf. RRC 401/1

And its restoration:

Under Augustus

Update 10-26-22:

Cic. Ver. 2.5.12-14:

“Did you dare to snatch from the very jaws of death and to release slaves whom you had decided were eager to take arms and to make war in Sicily, and whom in accordance with the opinion of your colleagues on the bench you had sentenced, after they had been already delivered up to punishment after the manner of our ancestors and had been bound to the stake, in order to reserve for Roman citizens the cross which you had erected for condemned slaves? … That a man should have released slaves; that that very man who had sentenced them should release them; that he should release them, in a moment, out of the very jaws of death, that he should release slaves convicted of a crime which affected the life and existence of every free man— O splendid general, not to be compared now to Marcus Aquillius, a most valiant man, but to the Paulli, the Scipios, and the Marii! That a man should have had such foresight at a time of such alarm and danger to the province! As he saw that the minds of all the slaves in Sicily were in an unsettled state on account of the war of the runaway slaves in Italy, what was the great terror he struck into them to prevent any one’s daring to stir? He ordered them to be arrested—who would not he alarmed? He ordered their masters to plead their cause—what could be so terrible to slaves? He pronounced “That they appeared to have done….” He seems to have extinguished the rising flame by the pain and death of a few. What follows next? Scourgings, and burnings, and all those extreme agonies which are part of the punishment of condemned criminals, and which strike terror into the rest, torture and the cross? From all these punishments they are released. Who can doubt that he must have overwhelmed the minds of the slaves with the most abject fear, when they saw a praetor so good-natured as to allow the lives of men condemned of wickedness and conspiracy to be redeemed from punishment, the very executioner acting as the go-between to negotiate the terms?”

Barbara Pavlek, James Winters, Olivier Morin, “Ancient coin designs encoded increasing amounts of economic information over centuries.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 56 (2019).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2019.101103

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278416519300315

Abstract

Coinage, the practice of minting small bits of metal with distinctive marks, appearing in the second half of the 7^th century BCE, had a transformative impact upon ancient economies and societies. Controversies endure concerning the original function of ancient coinage, in particular the respective role of states and markets in its emergence. Applying information-theoretic measures to a corpus of 6859 distinct coin types from the Ancient Mediterranean world, dated between c. 625 and c. 31 BCE, we show that the symbols minted on coins (designs combining images of plants, deities, animals, etc.) became increasingly informative about a coin’s value. This trend was specific to value-relevant information, as distinct from information concerning issuing states. Coin designs also carried more information about higher denominations than about lower ones. Before numerical or written marks of value became widely used on coinage, these iconic symbols were carrying economic information.

“Don’t eat the coins! @nicklegalleries #numismatics #Coins #candy @mmschocolate
📷 from the brilliant mind of @brittany_demone“

Originally tweeted by Marina Fischer (@marina_coins) on June 15, 2021.

RRC 412 : L. Roscius Fabatus’ issue like Papius’ uses paired control marks (and also celebrates Juno Sopita). Some pairs repeat but some see unique to Fabatus. We saw the groma in my last post, but there are other fun examples of Roman technology on this series.

Lotto machine for randomizing ball draws!

This is also a great example about why one must read auction catalogues: they contain key information not just on specimens but also on types and also often finds and relevant scholarship. I just wish the individual entries were authored.

It took me the better half of forever to find the right comparative image but I did it and I regret not a moment spent trolling contorniates. (a good blog post about them in French)

Unindentified Machine(?)

Schaefer images same link as that above

Do you know of a better specimen of with this control mark?! I’d love to see it.

It does not look like any water pump I can find from the ancient world and yet I wonder if it is not a hydraulic tool of some sort. Must get:

Ortloff, Charles R. The Hydraulic State: Science and Society in the Ancient World. Milton: Taylor and Francis, 2020.

Alföldi 1942

Listed as unknown symbols by Crawford and others, but correctly identified by Fava.

RRC 412: 59 BCE (so Hersh and Walker and Hollstein)

Notice this depiction uses show two plumbs being used the not four typically used for reconstructions.

Below later images from funerary contexts.

I don’t want to loose these words of Dorothy Parker. (source)

This is instead of telephoning

because

I cant look you in the voice.

I simply cannot get that thing done

yet never have done such hard night and day work

never have so wanted anything to be good

and all I have is a pile of paper

covered in WRONG WORDS.

Can only keep at it

and hope to heaven to get it done.

Don’t know why it is so terribly difficult

or I terribly incompetant [sic].

– Dorothy Parker, 1945, a telegram to her editor

So numismatics is exceptionally lucky to have a well developed disciplinary ontology and thus a well established culture of using linked open data, all thanks to nomisma.org.

However, what the heck an ontology actually is and why it is essential to how we use and build digital tools isn’t always super clear, esp. to non-tech people. Max Ved nicely breaks it down for the laiety in these two blog posts:

What they are

How you build one

BMCR 2019.08.47, Master reviews Ann Vasaly, Livy’s Political Philosophy: Power and Personality in Early Rome. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Key excerpt

“Chapter 5 presents the Quinctian family as positive models of patrician behavior, “anti-Claudii” (80), who promote domestic concordia. In Vasaly’s reading, Livy’s Quinctii, especially Quinctius Capitolinus and Cincinnatus, transcend the self-interest and personal ambition so characteristic of the historian’s early republican patricians. Vasaly zeroes in on the speeches of the Quinctii to the plebs to illustrate this aspect of their exemplarity. Capitolinus’ exemplarity lies in his frank assertion to the plebs that their freedoms ought to have limits and his indictment of popular leaders who have not the interests of the state in mind but their own self-promotion. Vasaly notes that Capitolinus’ rhetoric echoes Livy’s presentation of the dangers of plebeian oratory expressed elsewhere in the pentad.

The sixth chapter considers Livy’s presentation of the plebs collectively in the pentad. They are consistently shown to be the foundation of military success but also emotional and volatile, for the most part without prudence, though they occasionally act prudently when they feel respected. Vasaly makes the point that the plebs have the capacity to destabilize the republic but are more likely to be intimidated and abused by patrician rulers. The chapter then examines examples of bad and good leadership of the plebs. The lowest of the low in Livy’s estimation, according to Vasaly, is the elite demagogue who stirs up the plebs out of tyrannical ambition. Conversely, patricians who champion the cause of the people are especially praiseworthy, with the Valerian family being particularly notable in this respect. These patricians pursue concordia, but their specialty is redressing wrongs done to the plebs. Vasaly devotes the rest of the chapter to plebeian figures who, justifiably in the narrator’s view, lead collective action against elite abuse even if that action leads to widespread social unrest.”