Arachne Entry = = impression of Berlin specimen from Stosch coll. glasspaste Winckelmann 1863

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From Logeion:

BUT what of the PAV… could it be from this:

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You don’t need to read this post. You just need to read:

Colonna, Giovanni. “Gli scudi bilobati dell’Italia centrale e l’ancile dei Salii.” Archeologia classica 43 (1991): 55-122. It is gloriously illustrated. JSTOR link

There I learned that the first intaglio (impression) above derives from a coin of Pius. He doesn’t seem to know the above specimen but the reset of this post and FAR More he covers v well.

Impression of original:

Update 6-2-21:

Now I know why those shields were tickling my numismatic brain:

Update 1-25-22:

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Ferri, Giorgio. “I Salii e gli « ancilia ».” In Apex : studi storico-religiosi in onore di Enrico Montanari, Edited by Casadio, Giovanni, Mastrocinque, Attilio and Santi, Claudia., 87-95. Roma: Quasar, 2016. Ordered from ILL 27 June 2023

Arachne image

A. Furtwängler, Beschreibung der geschnittenen Steine im Antiquarium, Königliche Museen Berlin (1896), Kat.Nr. 9515 ZenonJ. J. Winckelmann, Description des pierres gravées du feu Baron de Stosch, dédiée à son Eminence Monseigneur le Cardinal Alexandre Albani (1760), Kat.Nr. II,285 Zenon

This post supplements appendix 2 of my 2018 article.

Cf. RRC 372/1

Other coins-glasspaste connections

Knossos labyrinth

unbearded Janus

Artemis of Ephesus in her temple

bearded Janus

plowing scene

head of Roma

Portrait (Sextus Pompey?), cf. 483/2 and 511/1

man headed bull crowned by victory

another oath scene

Other gems of numismatic interest

A so called Sulla Portrait that looks nothing like 434/1

Link for next three (Notts collection).

Paphos sanctuary

Mt Argeus

I’m supposed to be grading and prepping for some serious meetings but I needed to start my day by just looking at some beautiful iconography and reminding myself I’m more than a bureaucrat in a large bean counting public institution.

I see imagery/attributes associated with Isis and Athena and Victory but cannot quite make out what is in her hand. Can you?

Update 5/16/22: I think it might be the top of a bow such as Artemis/Diana would have.

If you’re here for the coins, think about this one (RRC 409/1):

Just posting to archive.

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This talk shifted from slides to discussion of this twitter thread as an example of how online platforms (social media, including message boards) can be places where serious knowledge sharing and expertise takes place. I also demonstrated hypothes.is and how it could be used to collaboratively annotate and connect CRRO to past and present scholarship, either publicly or in dedicated working groups. This could mimic and expand the personal marginalia many of us already have added to our personal copies of RRC. I pointed out that this works for existing typology but has limited functionality for integrating new types.

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I’ve been reading and thinking with this book a great deal.

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This talk was unscripted and very informal in delivery; not even a work in progress but rather a thinking piece. It was recorded but has not (yet?) been released publicly. If you have a keen interest in seeing it do let me know.

This is a great article particularly for thinking about shifts in arms and armor in the Republic. I’m sure I’ll come back to it many times. Three initial thoughts below.

Michael J. Taylor. “Etruscan Identity and Service in the Roman Army: 300–100 B.C.E.” American Journal of Archaeology 121, no. 2 (2017): 275-92. doi:10.3764/aja.121.2.0275.

On RRC 319/1

P. 282-3: “The kneeling fighter on the Minucius Thermus denarius (see fig. 4) carries a round shield and thus seems to be a fallen cavalryman awaiting rescue from the infantryman with the scutum.”

I want the figure on the ground to have a round shield and on many dies it looks that way but I’m not so sure its consistent enough cross the known dies to really be an intentional distinction to help us identify the figures and their ranks:

A batch of more oval-ish shields:

P. 285: “Otherwise equipped as a Roman soldier, the Telamon soldier wears a hellenizing Attic-Phrygian helmet (characterized by the prominent brow protector and low hemispherical dome that rises to a Phrygian peak).⁷¹ Similar helmets, a common enough Greek style, are well attested in pre-Roman Etruscan art.⁷²“

The Phrygian helmet (often with wings) of course is common on numismatic depictions of Roma but one type is VERY close to this figurine’s helmet.

CF. RPC 1 520

I just love this marriage image.

p. 290: “The use of Greek myth on the urn is confident, even play-ful, with the front of the urn featuring centaurs and nymphs in apposition to the cavalryman, his warhorse, and his wife, proof of the wealthy patron’s studied Hellenism. The inscriptions are in Etruscan. A Volt-erran noble at the end of the Roman Republic could serve (and perhaps die) as a Roman eques and still go to the afterlife as an Etruscan aristocrat.”

This is a twitter convo that started because of one of Dr. Crom’s #ACOTD posts, morphed into consensus over obverse Muses (i.e. not Apollo on 410/2-10) and then turned to letter formation–weird long stroke on the first line of the V of MVSA on the reverses. There was also some discussion over the prevalence of banker’s marks (test punch marks) on the series. Anyway good bibliographical suggestions (Borghesi Ouevres and possible unpublished dissertation) and images so wanted to archive thread here. RRC 410

I gave a little book talk the other day

I didn’t know about this object until yesterday, when it was brought into a twitter convo. Needless to say I’ve been thinking about it ever since. The keen eyed Clare Rowan noticed a potential connection to a Cr. no. 6 obv symbol of the Papius series (images below) and I was deeply skeptical at first. Part of my skepticism in the knee jerk reaction came from how shiny the object looked in discussion on Roger Pearse’s blog. I thought they were gilt and thus I was like that can’t be real–must be a forgery for the titillation of some 19th century collector. But we must consider all options.

The BM description leaves some thing to be desired.

Do you know of a fuller publication not (yet) known to me the BM or Pearse?

They are briefly discussed in Tracy 2013 Medieval Castration p. 43-44.

To start, why couldn’t the left hand topper not be Attis (castrated consort of Cybele)?

Also why are there flame/horn like spiky hair protrusions from the horse heads?

I also worry that the deities down the sides haven’t been well identified

The order seems possibly cosmological. Both sides terminate with bull heads.

The deities if read up the left hand side and down the right hand side are the days of the planetary week in order, plus one extra female goddess.

Notice a similar cosmological theme in this plate:

Here’s the reconstruction (read article online, download pdf):

Notice that the whole where the missing bottom pin or screw would be placed

So now the question is now not what is the funny triangle but rather what do horns have to do with clamps? I don’t know enough about animal husbandry….

Excerpt of Adams 1990:

I’m now reading Heeren 2009 who is not so fixated on the castration explanation of the tools. He suggests these items might be a twitch used in horse care. He brings up the incredibly weight of the metal clamps that survive that would make them less functional for either castration or twitching a horse as the weight of the object would cause more pain than if a lighter wooden tool was used.

So maybe its a clamp but not for twitching or castrating? What else do we do to animals with a clamp?