Speaking at noon about Sulla and the coinage so… you all might get a flurry of posts or maybe not as I do my image research.

Thinking about RRC 376/1 …

What is your theory about the nose spies and other ‘scratches’ on the die?!

I love my blog, but periodically I find other digital outlets and they distract me from it. Twitter (blogging light?!) is a big one for content that might go here. BUT the newest one is my newest website:

Julius Segall

We’ll see how it goes, but like my obsession with crochet (did I mention that?! I’m going through a ball of yarn a week night and 3-4 balls per weekend day) it is a late pandemic escapism project. (Oh I also went through a family photo album creation phase…) Whatever gets us through to vaccination, I say go with it!

Update: maybe I should just describe my relationship with my blog as non-monogamous…

So the weird thing about this coin issue is that apparently the moneyer only made unciae and semuncia. What’s up with that? Some guesses. 1) Tubulus also made the anonymous issue 287/1 (no proof, wild speculation, do not quote me as believing this!); 2) The moneyers in the annual college got to mint in order of their being returned in the election but were only allowed to produce as much coinage as was prescribed by the quaestor urbanus or the senate etc… (again don’t quote me, I’m being creative here), perhaps by Tubulus’ turn they didn’t need any large value issue and he decided to mint more coins by striking small change?!; 3) He made a radical choice to break tradition because it was popular?!?!?!

We’ll likely never know. Ok. To the evidence and away from flights of fancy! Let’s start with Schaefer this time. He has 28 specimens in his photo archive. Now I get to cross ref them with CRRO and CoinArchive and Acsearch.info… Back soon with an update. Scroll down for findings.

I’ve finished checking trade an CRRO for specimens not in Schaefe I decided they need their own sheet in my Unciae workbook, so if you go to Unciae in my Google sheets look at the bottom for a Tubulus tab for the specimens I’ve transcribed and their corresponding URLs. 35 specimens (so far) have weights. Do you know of a specimen I missed?! Let me know!

At least 21 dies from some 44 known specimens suggests a large issue with many missing specimens…. Note I’ve not checked specimens not in Schaefer for links or non-links. Regardless I think we can safely say this is a far larger issue than any of the earlier ones…

If you’ve been following along, you know that RRC 308 was dated later in the RR coin series by Lockyear 2018, but it bears repeating if you’ve ended up on this page accidentally.

The unciae are in visual dialogue with the semuncia of this issue. The semuncia has a single cornucopia and the unciae have two.

Schaefer binder for further specimens, and also this second page

Based on Schaefer and trade I know of 19 specimens 18 with weights. Schaefer has identified at least nine reverse dies.

double cornucopiae aren’t unheard of later in the series. The most famous double horns are on the coinage of Arisinoe II, but the type was also in use on small bronzes of Alexandria in the last decade of the second century BCE (ANS illustrative set of search returns). Likewise, we find it (like because of Ptolemaic influence) on small bronze civic coinage of Laodikeia in Phyrgia , ditto Marathos in Phoenicia. Why Alexander II Zabinas (128-123 BCE claimed the Seleucid throne) would put this Ptolemaic design on his small bronze coins is beyond me but must have an explanation. I’m not getting stuck in the late Seleucid dynastic struggles today!!! (but will note motif shows up on coinage of Cleopatra Thea and Cleopatra VII cf. this one too)

The motif is also known on small bronzes of Panormus likely dating to 2nd cent BCE (cf. specimen in trade).

Ok. Dinner with family calls. Enough for today.

These coins of Amastris in Paphalagonia have been studied in depth by de Callataÿ.

This funny happened in my mind. It made me think of a mash up of two RR coin types, 385/4 which I’m working on with a research assistant and 305/1 which came into the conversation about small change last week. The observation isn’t profound, or even very interesting, but the coins are nice. I wanted there to be a connection where there isn’t one because I want to know what deity is on the obverse of 385/4, or at least have satisfying speculation. BUT should I ever actually write my commentary on Memnon, the type above must be included!

Hmmmm….. I’m on to something else but came across this electrum fro Mytilene with a young Kabeiros … now this seems plausible…

I know I know this but as the blog is my external mind to help me remember things and I cannot seem to find a post to add this too as a note…. Here goes.

As the catalogue notes, Burnett 1983, p. 11 believes this type with an African Elephant was made in Sicily c. 213-210 by the Carthagianians for the Hannibalic War. This corrects the views of Robinson.

Also note that the specimen appears lightly double struck. See second nose under proper nose of final strike.

We only know her name, Philistis, from her coins and an inscription from the theater in Syracuse:

But we assume that this passage from Polybius describes her:

“Hiero had observed that the dispatch of a Syracusan army on an expedition under the command of the supreme magistrates invariably resulted in quarrels among the leaders and the outbreaks of revolutionary activity of some kind. He also knew that of all his fellow Syracusans it was a certain Leptines who commanded most supporters and the highest prestige and was particularly popular with the masses. He therefore made a family alliance with Leptines by marrying his daughter, so that whenever he had to go away on active service he could count on leaving Leptines behind as the guardian of his interests at home.”

And if that is correct then she is likely the mother of Hiero’s daughters, Damarata and Heraclia, known for Livy 24.26. We don’t think Neireis is her daughter as Justin 28.3 would suggest, but I’ve not investigated enough to be 100% confident.

Her coinage is extensive and beautiful and yet there is so little trace of her in the written records…

Bibliography to learn more down the road…

Storaci, Ermelinda and Manenti, Angela Maria. “Un nuovo ripostiglio di Filistide a Siracusa.” Annali dell’Istituto Italiano di Numismatica 59 (2013): 217-223.

Dimartino, Alessia. “Ierone II, Filistide e il teatro greco di Taormina: note in margine a IG XIV, 437.” In Immagine e immagini della Sicilia e di altre isole del Mediterraneo antico, Edited by Ampolo, Carmine. Seminari e Convegni / Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa; 22, 721-726. Pisa: Ed. della Normale, 2009.

Caccamo Caltabiano, Maria, Carroccio, Benedetto and Oteri, Emilia. “Il sistema monetale ieroniano: cronologia e problemi.” Atti della Accademia Peloritana dei Pericolanti, Classe di Lettere, Filosofia e Belle Arti 69 Suppl. 1 (1993): 195-280.

Caccamo Caltabiano, Maria and Oteri, Emilia. “Cronologia e sistemi di produzione e di controlla delle monete dei «Siracusani di Gelone».” Numismatica e Antichità Classiche 22 (1993): 91-110.

I want to think about how RIC Augustus 407 intersects with Republican types of Caepio Piso and also the Plebeian Aedile issue of the Cinnan regime, not to mention the Libertas issue of 45….!

Also cool rostra on the rostra!!!

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Update 11-25-25:

I ended up on this old post this AM and stopped to fix the broken images and then started noticing not the similarity but the difference. Besides the clear indication the scene is on the rostra (itself significant for creating as setting) we also have a the staff next to only one of the figures. WHAT is the staff!?! The subsellium is for magistrates without imperium (quaestors, aediles, tribunes of the plebs). BUT the staff has a bulge it that seems no die engraving accident. That made me wonder if it was supposed to be a bundle of fasces, but I don’t like that interpretation. Too narrow (very unlike other iconography), magistrates don’t hold their own fasces. It isn’t a scepter there is not decorative top. So what is it?!

Also un related notice the attempt as creating depth through angling the bench seat edges but the engraver did not get the angles right for the desired effect.

I swore I had a post on this topic back from like 2013 when the blog was still anonymous. Can’t find it, so am throwing some info up for future reference.

#Scripulum #Scripula #Scrupulum #Scrupula

A scruple is a 1/288 division of something, usually a pound, so 1/24th of an ounce or uncia.

For the use in land division where a scripula was the 1/288 of a iugera and thus 10×10 Roman feet or a decempeda.

Now you’re thinking to yourself: why, why did she skip Herennius? Cast your mind back, dear reader, to the semunciae post. As detailed there, Herennius likely comes later in the series, so we have to treat Sulpicius first! RRC 312

Are you reminded of the dog (who was a very good boy, of course!)? I am reminded of that dog too (RRC 293/3)! And that goatish, horsish quadruped?! Yes! exactly! That too (RRC 292/5 new)! But wait. Those were reverses, here its an obverse. The reverse is our moneyer’s name in a wreath! We’ve seen that too in just the last post for 305/2 and also on two of the three semunciae and will see it on later unciae (links to come).

So what’s with this? It feels like no one can decide what small change SHOULD look like or at least the idea of what it should look like is in flux. As I mentioned in the semunciae post, the wreaths with inscription in it are well known on various regional coins (including those of Cossura!).

A round of the sort of coins I’m thinking of (ignoring Augustan era ones):

Pegasus is rare on the republican series, but not so rare we should make too much of it. I suppose it had some significance to the moneyer… No particular relation as far as I can make out to symbols on rest of RRC 312 series.