The origins of this blog and the RRDP project are pretty much the same. I was trying to figure out how to write my second book on Roman republican coins and how to explain their significance to the average historian. In the spring of 2014 (still in the first year of this blog) I was still thinking of the book as a chronological treatment (I gave that approach up in 2018). But even as I conceptualized the project of translating republican numismatics for republican historians, I already knew that certain topics and themes would be more important or just frankly easier for the uninitiated to see the relevance.
Already in December 2013 I had identified the grain supply as one of those topics and had written off the blog in a word document some 5,500 words on that topic. I naively thought at that point that that writing was ‘drafting’ my ‘book chapters’. I still clung to the view that this blog was ‘non-sense’ and that drafting could be done in the raw without pre-writing. I did eventually post the timeline I had created and then used those early off-blog drafts to influence other bits of published writing in the book. Some of the work also ended up in my 2017 Minucius article. Strangely, the topic ended up being scattered over the whole book.
Sometime while I was wrestling with the grain supply, I think, in early 2014, I realized the key importance of RRC 330/1, the Caepio Piso issue, as potential quantitative evidence to set against literary testimony of state expenditure on grain, particularly for the urban population.
Then came the key question: Had a die study been done already or was that for me to do?!
I asked Rick Witchonke and in his response was the first time I learned about Schaefer and his monumental archive. I wrote Richard and he very kindly sent me scans of the binder pages for RRC 330/1. I didn’t believe such a thing could exist. It was brilliant and tantalizing. If the metadata is correct on the below image file. The birthday of RRDP or at least the first seeds of the project were planted on April 17, 2014. I was out of my mind on all the hormones and stress involved with invasive infertility treatments and here was a numismatic treasure trove that promised a lifetime of curious puzzles, meaningful work, and joy. I was obsessed.
That August I returned to the US pregnant with twins and with about 80% of a manuscript. I hit three walls simultaneously. The deep fatigue of growing humans, the demoralization of learning my manuscript bore no resemblance to what my publisher wanted to publish, and teaching four days a week for the first time ever because of scheduling snafu. Fall 2014 was the hardest teaching semester of my life. I taught, I slept, I tried to ingest as many calories as I could keep down. I did not think about coins. And I really didn’t return to coins for a significant period of time. As the fog lifted mid 2015 (post birth and post-partum depression) I let myself enjoy Dionysius of Halicarnassus, work that will appear in future years, in various fora, and I threw myself into Mellon Mays, which eventually took me towards new meditations on debt, slavery, and the nature of freedom. As those regular readers of the blog will know that debt is a topic to which I’ve been returning with gusto over the last 18 months.
I didn’t make it back to mentally engaging with either my second book project or the Schaefer archive until Fall 2017. [That is about one year after I bought my house and left the city to get a little physical distance from my campus, as I was not really managing to have any emotional distance.] That Fall I recruited a team of undergraduate research assistants and wrote a successful proposal for us as a team to work on the RRC 330/1 using the images Schaefer had sent me back in April of 2014. Those students were so brilliant! They helped me learn how to teach RR coins and die studies and databases to Undergrads. Each took a control symbol and completed the remainder of the die study augmenting the the Schaefer material with other specimens. Of course at that point I didn’t know about overflow/clippings images Schaefer didn’t have in the binder. The students ended their semester’s work with data visualization of how best to represent die links within their individual controlmarks. Those posters decorate my office in Brooklyn and they collectively convinced me of the Roman republican inclination to pair dies. There are a few clusters but mostly pairs.
[I’ll finish the origin story, but I’ve already decided that the introduction to the RRDP volume will center RRC 330/1 as a case study and exempla of the importance of the project as a whole. I had to write to this point to know that I want to do this and to believe it would work and I’d have something to say. Just like my previous post was necessary to realize, I WANTED to write the volume introduction, not just to have written it.]
Fast forward a year and I was thinking more about aes grave and my former teaching partner, Wayne Powell, was talking to me more and more about his work on ancient bronze artifacts. I started dreaming up a metallurgical project on cast coinages. I pitched it to the ANS. After much back and forth, I failed to convince them that such a project had any merit such that they wished to provide access to their materials for testing.
That was hard to hear, but eventually led to two great outcomes. First, the aes grave work has continued first with my work on metrology and then actual metallurgical work with Princeton, Yale, Rutgers and then Nottingham for the Nemi material, and now the ISIS particle accelerator. This work is ongoing and has led to a much broader network of collaborations. Had, the ANS not said ‘no’ in the first instance, it is hard to see myself as being brave enough to reach out to other partners and the project might never have led me to such exciting horizons. Second, as I was discussing my disappointment and numismatic ambitions with Lucia Carbone in the aftermath, I told her my biggest dream, the one I most wanted to accomplish, was a digitization of the Schaefer archive. And, she said, LET’S DO IT. I needed that “yes”. That confidence that it could be possible, that it was worthy of funding, and time, and preservation, and our creative engagement.
There have been many struggles and compromises along the way, but I have no regrets we did it. And we did deliver what we said we would. I might have dreamed of more and different data interfaces, but the data is accessible and safe for future generations. I doubt I will ever write anything on republican coins that will not utilize it in some fashion.
Drawing of a Roman Gem, Knowledge as Victory? Conquest of the Mind? (BM image)
Things are not good. Perhaps we can just all agree on that.
The title of this post is not a giving up, but rather yet another sincere effort to push myself to engage, to write, to know why I do what I do. I’ve been writing but all my blog posts end up in the drafts file this past month. An alternate post title might be: What am I NOT writing today?
I’ve got 2/3s of a banger of a post on disciplinarity. Yes, once again I’m wrestling with what the heck is Classics and where does it belong in the 21st century academy. That post is most certainly inspired and necessitated by my own struggles as a chair of a shrinking department. And, yet discretion is often called for in delicate moments. I write to know my mind and sometimes its best not to share. I know. I know. That is radically different than the very premise of this blog and my own general philosophy of being. I want to be an open book.
I’ve got another draft of a massive numismatic-themed post about a gorgeous 18th century series of drawings of coins, the vast majority of which don’t exist but are directly inspired by identifiable types. It feels a rather a significant step forward in my emerging work on fantasy pieces. I think I may actually have something original and necessary to say on the topic given some more time and data collection. After 12 years of blogging my research process, I know how slow it is to go from post to completed article. My first post on elephants and pigs appeared 2014 and the article didn’t appear in a PR journal until 2021. I like complex puzzles and pulling ALL the threads together. I’d publish more, I think ,if I turned more of my one-off ideas into articles or notes.
Today, I have time to write and I’m in the mood to return to either of those two pieces. But I’m not doing so. And, in fact, I stopped working on both because of other professional commitments.
I have also not started any new blog posts. I have an incredible itch to write about necro-classics, a concept introduced to me in conversation with Kyle Khellaf, a visiting scholar, I hosted earlier this week for a campus lecture. If I’ve captured the idea he himself adapted from other scholars of more contemporary periods, necro-classics is when an ancient society marks certain humans as unworthy of life and/or where their death is without any significance or meaning. Humans so marked then experience being in essence the living dead. If you want a quick conceptualization just think of Cicero’s state of mind after Clodius manages to have him exiled. Or the proscribed under Sulla. We know and discuss these historical examples because in fact whether those lives mattered were disputed by the Romans themselves. By contrast, there were whole peoples the Romans were happy to exterminate that barely blip on our historical radar. In this conversation, I then raised the concepts of social death and natal alienation as the defining characteristics of enslavement as theorized by Orlando Patterson. Who were the scholars influencing Khellaf on this? I’d write and ask, but the answer might just be another distraction.
So here we have already three things that I’m NOT writing about (that I want to write about!) and looming over me (with SO many shades of guilt) is the need to draft some sort of introduction for the conference volume for the AAR-RRDP conference last April. There I said it. Confession is good. Even a little bit of public shaming of myself.
I keep telling myself that I have no inspiration, that it doesn’t move me, that I don’t know what to say, that I wish to be back in Rome in the gardens of the Academy bouncing ideas off my fellow conference attendees and contributors. I tell myself I’m bored with the topic. That there is nothing left to say. Or, that none of it matters–what’s the point?! On the flip side, the conference was awesome and I want the papers published and I want to say why six years of RRDP matters and why I bothered to give that project so much time and why I think there is still work to be done.
On Monday, after Khellaf’s brilliant lecture on the PostClassical Magreb, I had a conversation with Joel Christensen about writing at the reception. He was talking to a student when I joined in. Christensen was extolling the virtues of writing (only?) when one has something to say, giving it a little time (rather than hours, days, weeks of sitting with the work), and letting one’s brain continue to work on the topic even as one engages in all the other aspects of academic life. There is truth in all this. When I know what I want to say, even what I need to say, the words just come. Setting work down and coming back to it always makes it stronger. Writing is an iterative process. And, when I’m in a writing project it is easy to return to it, I even feel compelled to do so. Such is very much the case with the post on disciplinarity or the one on fantasy pieces sitting in my drafts folder.
Yet, as I said to Christensen, sometimes we can also write just to start. To know that our fingers will move. That we can control our brains and take the noise and chaos and put it to a problem in a linear fashion. Herein is the essence of my blogging. It started as an exercise and meditation on how to write. It evolved into a repository of ideas. A workspace for connecting disparate pieces of primary evidence. And, now when I find being simultaneously a scholar and petty bureaucrat so hard, it is again an exercise and meditation on writing.
989 words. In less than an hour.
I can make myself write. I will make myself write.
I can explain why my work matters, even in the face of fascism. I will not despair.
To be a humanist of esoteric things is to resist despair.
It is not selfish, but rather a small gift I can give future generations.
I’m delighted to learn that the proceedings of the International Numismatic Congress held in Warsaw, Poland, in 2022 is now published AND is OPEN ACCESS. Now we can all read the papers we couldn’t attend!
In the Roman section I contributed two short pieces on RRDP both co-authored, on the second one Alice did all the heavy lifting. I’m dead impressed and honored to be on the author list. The first one is an abbreviated preliminary version of ideas that will appear in a fully fleshed out article this year or next in RBN.
“Quintus Fabius Maximus called the Verrucosus who was dictator of the Roman People – Five times / Consul – Twice Viceroy Aedile – Curole [sic; Curule] – Military Tribune Pontiff and Augur – / king – In the first Consulate he subjugated the Ligurians – held Hannibal under control several times – / being Consul The fifth time, he brought Taranto under the obedience of the Roman People and / to this fact, the reverse of the Medal makes allusion, where the consular / fasces are seen – / The head of this great man has never been seen on the Medals / by any Antiquarian, therefore this one is very rare and is preserved among the antiquities of – / my Dear Friend the S.[igno]r Abbate Ballerini, a man very learned both in Antiquities / and in Literature, and is librarian in the library of Casa Barberini and antece – / the former librarian, is Vicar of Monsignor of Carpentrasso, and also of His Holiness Cardinal Monti / is the present Librarian of the Barberini House, Designed by My Lord Pietro / Leone Ghezzi, on the 15th November 1753, at my age of 79 years -” Inscriptions on large coin: Obverse: Q.[VINTVS] FABIVS MAX.[IXIMVS] On the reverse: TARENT[VM] RESTIT[IT] and below: ROVERCIO DELLA TESTA DI Q.[UINTO] FABIO Above small version of obverse: DRITTO and of reverse: ROVERCIO [sic]
This is super important for demonstrating that the fashion for fantasy pieces and the belief in their authenticity (in some cases) pre dates the mid 18th century.
I mentioned in the “just email” post that I’ve trying to read a little in the morning over coffee something that stimulates my intellectual curiosity, but not directly connected to research. My theory is if I spend my days as a petty bureaucrat and event planner at least I will not forget I am a scholar and I may find it easier to hit my research goals in the moments in between.
Why this? It was to hand. I picked up a copy at some charitable book store over the last few years. It comes in small chunks–so easy to pick up and put down. I like fragmentary texts. I like alternate perspective and less known voices from the ancient world. The narrative variations are fun.
I’m teaching Sex and Gender and thus gender is on my brain. Or maybe it is this moment where government entities seem obsessed with policing gender expression and trying to define and codify the gender binary. Or maybe I just think about gender and gender performance a great deal regardless.
This passage many of you will already know. It gets leaned on hard in many progressive communities of Christian faith, and interpreted with different emphases in conservative ones.
27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.
Galatians 3:27-29 (NRSVA translation)
If you’re not familiar with this letter of Paul the wikipedia entry isn’t half bad and gives a nice little outline of the letter to help you see the context of this quote.
So this canonical text is in my mind, for all I always struggle with Paul. I prefer Mark, then Acts, then Matthew and Luke, the rest of the canon is interesting, but I find less compelling… The dangers of being a Roman historian engaging with ancient texts as both ethical spiritual teaching and as a scholar. I have heterodox opinions.
Here are two passages that seem to speak to this idea in discussion in early Christian communities.
First the so called Gospel of the Egyptians known from Clement of Alexandria. Clement was particularly obsessed with a reported convo between Jesus and Salome. No, not the lady who asked for John the Baptist’s head. Just a common enough name to make one check twice.
“Death will last as long as women give birth”
“Then I’ve done well not to give birth?” “Eat of every herb, except the bitter one.”
[when will secret knowledge, be revealed] “When you trample on the shameful garment and when the two become one and the male with the female is neither male nor female.”
Clement has his own reasons for cherry picking this text, but for me the verbal echoes of Paul are suggestive of a conversation on the nature of gender, one familiar from stories of Thecla and Perpetua from the early church. The two become one motif is popular in other apocrypha as well appearing in Coptic Gospel of Thomas. And I am curious how much we can read the motif generally about gender.
It seems to me a great deal of the interpretation depends on the sense of META (“with” in the above translation).
“The Male together with the Female is neither Male nor Female” suggests an end to gender distinction as an ideal state
“The Male in dealings with the Female, is neither Male nor Female” suggests the teachings is meant to say something of how the sexes interact.
The natural reading seems to be using META as a conjunction giving primacy to the Male position, but given that the rest of the quotes have to do with procreation, I wonder and I appreciate the ambiguity of the “with” in the translation. Which got me to think “what f– does that mean?!”.
The ideal of Maleness over Femaleness is the very last verse of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, a collection of Jesus sayings from the Nag Hammadi library discovered in 1945.
The internet is a wonderful place. I don’t read Coptic but I did find this gem.
All of this is just to ensure I have this material to hand for my last seminar of the semester and also so I have a place to add more gems as I continue my morning readings.
Our culture is changing. It always does. Quite often in response to wider events. I can stop my own doom scroll and limit my news in-take. I can speak up where it might make some small impact. I can do the right thing by those I meet. Yet, I cannot stop noticing the signs of despair and fragmentation among my neighbors and nation-wide. It tells me we collectively are a long way from the hope of 2008, when change seemed possible. Positive change, not the violent, traumatizing kind that seems bubbling up everywhere.
Personally, I’m in a pretty good place. I don’t have long Covid, the initial viral infection just sparked a bacterial one in my sinuses. 24-hours into antibiotics I started feeling like my old self. I’ve had clarity of purpose in my work and a degree of mental peace from learning to trust my ability to make moral choices and accept whatever comes next. It helps that my small domestic world is full of joy and pleasures. I picked beans and treated the weathered front door. Dinner is in the slow cooker. All the neighbor kids are in the dining room playing D&D with the best of all DMs (a doting father). My beloved is building a garden shed out of salvaged hardwood doors. Life really does not get better than this. I even have time to write and interrogate the shift I’m seeing.
Exhibit one.
I posted this on Instagram as a story. I thought it was silly and unexpected. Then a colleague helped me connect the dots. It is a pre-packaged BORG or more accurately in this instance a BORL.
A BORG is a Black Out Rage Gallon. I kid you not. It has a wikipedia page. And these are all the rage I’m told on college campuses. Around this country, our smart young people want to lose consciousnesses. To stop the rage? To feel the rage? To embrace the rage? Whichever it is they certainly want to forget it all.
The practice is so common that companies are now emulating the packaging and recipes to bring this to a liquor store near you. There were other flavors but this one leans into tongue and cheek patriotism and a shade of artificial blue reminiscent of anti-freeze, that famously sweet ‘treat’ that has killed many an unsuspecting family pet.
It’s good business to make something cheaper and more convenient than one can make at home. This is a sound example of entrepreneurship in late stage capitalism. Make it easier to black out and give the people a little joke to chuckle about as they do so. The elites can thumb their nose at the packaging and think it ironic. The working class can embrace the messaging and thumb their nose at the judgy elites who would never buy such a thing. Something for everyone.
Genius.
Exhibit 2.
This is Spirit Halloween 2025. The whole business model of the company profits from the failures of late stage capitalism. Aged malls are full of abandoned spaces. A big box store closes and no new company wants to move into a failed space. 99% invisible did a fabulous deep dive on this so just go listen to that for the corporate context. Spirit Halloween rents those places at deep discount for just a couple months of the year. No long term contracts: fast cash into the landlord’s pocket and no off-peak costs for the tenant.
For the customers the annual opening marks the beginning of the ‘holiday season’. More and more I hear friends and friends of friends say Halloween is their favorite holiday, more than Christmas, more than Thanksgiving. I get it. You decorate, but cooking is at a minimum, and far less pressure to be with your family of origin. Back in the day, Dan Savage, a sex-positive gay advice columnist, used to call Halloween ‘straight pride’. Go head and do a little bad cross-dressing. Get into a slutty nurses outfit. Play with handcuffs with your cops and robbers costume.
My kids adore Spirit Halloween. My beloved and I play act our way through each visit. Do you like me in this mask? Don’t we need this giant fake battle axe? We learn a little more about our children’s internal fantasies, fears, hopes, dreams by watching them interact with the ever more dazzling array of plastic crap. This year as we approach the store one kiddo says she wonders what the theme will me. Carnivals and Carnies was last year. It is always that sort of thing. Gothic Horror or Mad Scientist or anything else you might find as a theme for a haunted house.
By now you’ve realized what the pictures are. It’s this years theme–the NYC subway.
Somewhere in a corporate creative unit they workshopped this idea. What are we afraid of this year? Not Nazis, they’re back in fashion. Creepy Doctors? Plague? Too soon. Pedophiles? Could be too political.
I KNOW. PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION.
*cough* Unsegregated Urban Spaces *cough*
Thanks Fox News.
What’s the biggest baddest city of them all. The most iconic. NYC of course.
Didn’t you hear those people want to elect a brown muslim mayor? One who might actually address issues like public transportation and the cost of living.
Spirit Halloween creative team hit the nail on the head. There is profit in fear. They serve populations with cars that shop on Stroads. People who can at least dream of owning a 20 foot skeleton and having a place to store it in the off season. They may live near those urban centers, but they don’t necessarily know how to navigate those spaces. They tell stories of rich panhandlers pretending to be homeless while living in deluxe apartments right off Time Square. The city is not for the innocent or the naive.
I understand. I travel. Each new transit system takes some learning. But while I’ve smelled death on the subway (don’t get in the empty car, it is empty for a reason), it never features in my nightmares.
Instead, when the night gremlins come to wake me up at 3 am, they only ask, will my children be able to move through this country and the world with the incredible freedom and joy with which I have?
It is Friday of the first week of classes. It is the last week of August a month I’ve spent almost entirely either sick with Covid or trying to get back to normal. I’m still foggy, fatigued, and phlegmatic. How’s that for an alliterative tricolon?
Yesterday I finished emails and fell asleep for 2 plus hours in the afternoon. This is unheard of for me. I can certainly perform, I’ve had great classes and meetings, but instead of feeling energized I feel zonked. Yes, I’m griping, but I’m also doing that thing of re directing my focus and exercising my writing muscles to try to get to a different mental space.
Beside this little writing exercise, I’ve been starting my day with a short walk and reading something intellectual and in my discipline but without direct connection to any project. My idea is that if I get my blood moving and my brain working before the email, it will set a better tone for the day. I’m finding my work for the college all-consuming. This isn’t necessarily bad. I love my students. I value my colleagues. I’m motivated by our mission. The work is good and meaningful. Besides the fatigue, there is my age old problem of switching gears. I tend to do one thing well and find it all consuming in any moment. This is a core asset to my identity as a researcher. Once I get stuck in I don’t let go.
When I was a lowly grad student, Michael Crawford (yes that one), said to me the secret of success was knowing exactly what you most wanted to look up the next time you had just 15 minutes in a research library. This terrified me. My supervisor told me not to worry, I wasn’t at that point in career. Now, I so wish, I knew the answer to Crawford’s question. I have promised many people many things related to my research. I even think I know what most of them are. I have as always a thousand puzzles I’d like to investigate. I have ambitions to continue to apply for grants and similar opportunities so future me will have what she needs to do the work.
And then there is email.
I find it more addictive than social media. Social media is where I dump intrusive thoughts. Email puts me in a reactive rather than proactive state of mind. What have I missed? Who needs my attention? Where are the fires? How can I avert the next crisis? I write and write and write and beast never quiets. Until it does and then I wonder why I don’t have answers to my questions yet…
I yearn for pigeon post, inter office mail, paper memos, and actual letters. Anything to slow down the flow of communication. It is like drinking from a fire hose. As I type this I’ve my work email closed on my computer.
And… I just slipped and peeked at it on my phone, as I was trying to remove it from my phone for the long holiday weekend. So now I know I have a draft personal statement to comment on and a bunch of lunch requests for a catered meeting next week (no I don’t have a secretary right now and the back up person is out on annual leave). This is not urgent stuff. I can write and get back to those little tasks when I finish this little writing exercise.
I. CAN. COMPARTMENTALIZE.
I. CAN.
Or, I must believe it is possible to both rest enough and work enough.
My beloved has suggested that I physically block out my research hours on my calendar. The advantage of trying this out is both the reminder to myself and also the physical act of knowing I’m sacrificing my research if I take a meeting at that time. I won’t say it won’t happen but at least I will have to face facts about what I’m doing.
The other goal for today is just to figure out what tasks can get fit around the edges. Stuff that doesn’t need large blocks of free space but that I could knock out rather than obsessing over my inbox.
That phrase I used earlier, PRO ACTIVE, rather than reactive, is really my current professional goal. I want to drive my work forward rather than scrambling from behind.
Another part of my internal dynamic is that it is so much easier to prioritize the immediate needs of living humans, than my own quest for knowledge. There is still a part of my brain that feels research is selfish. A vanity project.
Obviously that thinking is a little messed up. My research connects me to many brilliant humans with whom I also want to remain engaged. And my own drive to know is a worthy of attention. I never doubt that when I doing the actual work. Of course I sometimes find certain tasks boring, but the material remains ever fascinating. It is when I’m am focused else where that I tend to discount it.
Ok. With this window still open, I sweeped up the last of those emails and set an out of office until Tuesday.
It will be ok. I might even get some writing and/or research tasks done.
In addition to chairing I’ve taken on two new roles for the coming academic year. I’m serving as the Faculty Director for the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship on my campus and I’ll also have seven weeks in residency at the Institute for Classical Studies in London as the 2025-2026 T.B.L. Webster Fellow. Those week should be the last two in November, the middle two of January, the second week in February, and the first two weeks in June.
BUT, I really hoped on here to announce this publication in which I played a part.
Ok let me fan-girl Zach for a moment. He is that perfect combination of brilliant, witty, cutting and compassionate. He brings this voice and expertise into his writing. He got his JD and his PhD. He knows a thing or two and I adore learning from him.
This particular mosaic from Piazza Armerina has been the most sticky in my brain. And I hope writing about it will help.
The mosaic is located at the star on this public domain site plan from wikimedia. This set of rooms is sometimes considered private family quarters. The dating of the mosaics are disputed but definitely no earlier than the tetrarchy and perhaps even mid to late 4th century. As I learn more I’m sure I’ll have more opinions.
So let’s start with good old fashioned visual description.. There are five registers summarized as as follows. I’ll treat each in turn below.
(A) in the Apse two seated women making flower crowns
(B) The narrowest register between the columns a prize table
(C) Five standing male figures with musical attributes
(D) three standing figures, two inanimate objects, two more standing figures
(E) Three obscured (figures/objects), an inanimate object, two standing figures
Taking them in order. The photos used here (unless otherwise attributed) were taken by myself or my beloved. I’ve used Photoshop to de-skew the angles using rectilinear elements within the images themselves (i.e. the mosaic borders). I’ve also sharpened contrast to make details easier to observe.
Register (A)
At first glace the image is one of pleasing symmetry but in every detail the artist(s) break the perfection for heightened naturalism. The ‘tree” trunk curves left, and has only one broken branch on the left, on the right there are three all smaller than the one on the left. The right root is shorter than that on the left. A single heart shaped leaf is framed by the fork of the two upmost branches. It connects to the top of the left branch but has a vine-like spiral pointing to the right. From a branch on each side of the tree a crown is tied to support the work of the seated women. The left hand crown has a thicker or double band connecting it to the tree branch. The right hand crown is tied with a single line but wee can also see the short tail of this string as it is knotted around the branch.
The body postures of the two women echo each other nearly exactly they’re furthest legs are bend back, their form post legs come forward. Their further hands hold their respective crowns and their foremost hands reach out to each other and they seem to make eye contact. Here the similarity ends they’re garments are different colors. The left figure has a prominent belt and headband; the right figure a necklace. They seem to have different shades of hair, but of this I’m less confident. Their hair styles are clearly different, but they both have the v mark between their eyebrows.
Each woman sits on a stool that appears to be woven. The left hand stool has a checker or crisscross pattern, the right hand a zigzag. Both have a central band and a slightly flared top and bottom. Probably because (I would assume) this is the basic construction of such stools. Their flower baskets have similar minor differences, while still sharing the same basic conical form with two broad bands, narrow, bottom, top, and middle bands and two loop handles on either side. The contents are represented as two rows of flower heads the top being narrower than the bottom. The left basket has as its top band of its body a broad zigzag, the bottom is checkered or crisscross in pattern. The right basic has a narrow zigzag for both top and bottom body bands. The color and shape of the flower contents seems slight different. The top lip of the right basket is slightly broader. The right basket has a few flower heads scattered around it and a long shadow; all elements missing from the left basket. The scene is surrounded by irregular branches with leaves and flowers. Perhaps we are meant to interpret the branches as recently pruned fro the central tree? The leaf shape is different between the branches (ovoid) and the trunk (heart-shaped), but perhaps the heart shape is to remind of of evergreen ivy and indicates the tree is not truly dead, only hard cropped for the season.
The closest comparanda for these images within the villa itself are shown below. In the top register short squat female figures with v-shaped forehead markings pick flowers. In the next register down has taller more slender females with out forehead markings. The left hand figure makes flower garlands rather than crowns but the garlands are hung from a pruned trunk clearly meant to be the same plant from which the flowers are harvested. The trimmed branches seem to lay between the seated woman and the garlands she constructs. The composition shows similar tendencies towards ‘false symmetries’.
Register (B)
Before visiting Piazza Armerina IRL I had already talked about some of the mosaics on this blog. Particularly how the prize table depictions can help us better understand numismatic imagery.
This table holds from left to right:
(i) a money bag marked with an XII with a line above and another symbol perhaps something like a lower case “d”
(ii) a large prize crown with a middle band in a different color decorated with circles and vertical lines in another lighter contrasting color. From the top of the prize crown rises a flower crown with five flowers depicted as red and white spirals, these closely echo the crowns with five flowers similarly depicted in register A. Two palm fronts also emerge from the crown.
(iii) the same with minor variations in the depiction of the top and bottom band of the prize crown.
(iv) a money bag marked XIII with a line above followed by another X.
How do we interpret the numbers on the bags. A good question. I’m not fully satisfied I know, but I’ll build on what I said in my earlier post. The line above multiplies by a thousand. So the left bag might read 12,500 if the symbol to the far right is a lower case D and is also roman numeral. There is no indication of denomination as in the other prize table discussed in the other post. If this interpretation is correct, then the right hand bag could be 13,010. These seem random numbers and maybe they are just that, random numbers the artist(s) made up for decoration.
Register (C)
Register “C” is not a well preserved but is still better than most. Each of the five figures is somewhat distinct and thus we will describe in turn left to right before considering the composition as a whole.
(i)
The first figure is all in white. The top garment is worn over tunic with broad stripe visible on his right shoulder. The top garment is likely a toga but I hesitate to confidently identify it as such. The bindings on the sandals reach almost to the bottom of the drapery. On his head is a crown with five protrusions, likely flowers. The crown, like the palm frond in his left hand, echo the iconography of the prize table above, even as the flowers are not the same shape, color or pattern. The figure raises his right hand palm up in a gesture often associated with oratory/declamation. V mark is clear on the forehead. The body proportions are squat almost childlike.
(ii)
The second figure might be female. The damage on the top of the figure makes me hesitate. I see no long hair and no breasts or typically female jewellry. The feet a fully slippered and the garment consists of at least three pieces an under garment in reddish tones, a darker bluish over garment and a reddish cloak. The lighting and the dust and photography makes me hesitant to say anything much about pigments. Again the forehead V. The hair is largely obscured by damage and what seems to be a crown of overlapping leaves or leaf shapes with a center circle medallion.
The stringed lyre-like instrument rests on a small table. The bottom of the instrument rest flat on the table top and is shaped almost as an open book with its fan of leaves on each side. There appear to be four strings but I am not confident–they’re could be more. They attach to long almost triangular pegs protrude down from the top bar. The top of the bar is smooth and each end has a ball. The two side arms seem to curve slightly towards the player and widen as they join the odd shaped base. We see the instrument resting at an angle on the table by aid of a small black support. The player has both hands on the strings. One in front one in back like a modern harp player. There is no suggestion of a plectrum.
(iii)
This figure kinda kicked off my obsessive need to interpret and better understand this mosaic. His crown looks like pipe organs. I love pipe organs in antiquity but find it odd I’ve not posted much about them on the blog. They appear in this past post because of the manual bellows. Basically I looked at this guy and asked why were the pipes on his head not on the table and the stringed instrument being held by hand. Lets say the object isn’t even an organ (lots of images below), but instead just upside down pan-pipes: WHY on the HEAD! He touches his head with his left hand in a gesture of self crowning. This type of gesture is completely normal for athletes even if it is more typical for them to crown themselves with their right hand than their left, we do have left handed parallels (RPC examples; as well as examples from the athletes in the mosaics from the Baths of Caracalla now in the Vatican).
His empty right hand is held out in a waist level palm up gesture. It is a gesture often intended to indicate the importance of something. Is he gesturing to the table and its odd use as a stand for the stringed instruments where we might expect to see his pipes resting? Yet his isn’t suggested by his gaze which seem to be offer to his left.
Is this meant to be funny? They are all rather stocking figures with the V s on their foreheads. Are they imitating common activities but doing them just slightly wrong for our amusement? I lean toward no but I will keep the theory in mind.
In dress he echoes the first figure (i). Mostly white with just a few details. A garment draped over his left shoulder revealing an undergarment (tunic) with a stripe on his right shoulder. This tunic appears to have long sleeves with broad dark cuffs. There is a dark decorative circle in the bottom left hem of his garment. His sandals are much less elaborate in their strapping and lower as well. His legs are bare between the sandals and the hemline.
Partial surviving organ from Pompeii, the only real example I know of from antiquity (flickr – image source)detail from the Zliten mosaic, 2nd century CE (wiki commons)Nennig Villa Mosaic (wiki commons)Organ from Dion (wiki commons)found in Trier (reddit = image source)
These athletes from the baths of Caracalla show the five pointed crowns and palms as contest prizes. The left figure also demonstrates an act of self crowning.
Figure iv may be female but beyond the high waist-ed, long sleeved horizontally striped dress there is little remaining of the figure to allow us to be certain. The figure plays the double auloi (flute) with raised elements along the shaft (cf. reference images for RRC 412/1, no. 127)
Figure v is clearly male he wears a double striped white tunic belted low on his waist. A reddish cloak covers his shoulders and hangs down on his left side ending in a tassle. His sandals or boots come up almost to the hem of the tunic and the strapping pattern is even more dense than on figure i. Like figure i he wears a five pointed crown, potentially represented flowers but not depicts in the same manner as those in register A or B. Again we have the v on the forehead.
The instrument is curious and I do not have good parallels. I give close up images of key details below. The mouth piece seems distinctive. This is common enough on depictions of single wind instruments (cf. reference images for RRC 412/1, no. 20). The player’s left hand uses an over hand grip or fingering close to the mouth piece, while his right hand uses an under hand grip or fingering much lower on the instrument, such that his arm is almost fully extended and there is only a slight bend in his elbow. I’m most curious about the black bar on the top of the instrument. What is its function? I’ve never seen a wind instrument with this feature. Could it be a slide of some sort?! Did that exist in antiquity?
Perhaps the best parallel for these two figures are the figures from the Patras mosaic below. The far left figure seems to play a wind instrument with a similar elevated linear element near a female figure (right most in this cropping). The figure in the middle may be a judge. He could be equivalent to to figure (i) in this register.
Stepping back how can we see the five figures as a group belonging on a single register together?
I’d read this composition and three men and two women. All the men wear striped tunics. While none of the figures is identical they closely echo each other from the outside in, again using principles of what I’ve been calling false symmetry. So the two outer most figures both have the five pointed crowns and tall extra strappy sandals. All the male figures extend their right arm but the elevation of the hand decreases left to right. The two female figures face inwards helping direct our focus to the mirroring center of the composition. their hands are closer together with arms bent and raised to about chest height. The harp on a stand and the crown of pipes are the historically strangest elements but they nicely visually echo each other as linear inanimate objects on either side of the center point of the composition.
If we had to describe the scene we might say these are winners in a musical competition, if we allow the right hand figure to be a singer. Otherwise we may call them competing performers to be more generalized.
Further reference images
Register (D)
This register has three figures (i, ii, and iii), two inanimate objects (iv and v) and two further figures (vi and vii). Again we’ll describe each as they can be seen in their presently heavily damaged condition.
(i and ii)
These two figures are dressed in near monochrome dark collars. Each may have a darker narrow stripe running down from each shoulder. The left hand figure has a white narrow line as if the dress is belted under the breasts. No hands are visible but seem to be hidden within voluminous sleeves. There may be traces of longer hair on the right hand shoulder of figure (i). A single slipper on the right hand foot of figure (i) peaks out from the floor length garment. The head is turned slight upwards and towards the center of the composition, even with the damage at least part of the forehead v is visible. Figure (ii) is badly damaged but clearly stands just in front of and to the left of figure (i) and they are too be considered closely related.
(iii and iv)
All we have of figure (iii) is a small section of their billowing garment of a similar shade to the figures (i and ii). The billowing suggests movement towards the center of the composition and perhaps interaction with object (iv). The top of object (iv) is also lost as is a little of the bottom right hand corner. The basic shape is of a rather round bellied amphora, notice the circular handle visible on the upper left corner of what remains. It rest on a narrow pole merging from a pyramidal base of a reddish color seemingly made of rectilinear blocks (bricks? stones?). A similar more elaborate base is visible in register E and will be discussed below.
Amphora are often depicted near prize tables. See below for the mosaic from Patras and further discussion of it. When on the prize table they are often interpreted as prizes themselves — think of the Panathenaic vases from centuries earlier. However, amphorae were also used for sortition or drawing lots to decide in a fair and random manner the order in which individuals were to compete and perhaps even who would be matched with whom in some instances. From the time of Commodus onwards we find the motif on Roman provincial coinage primarily from Asia Minor. Three figures is the most common depiction. But we have one instance of a man looking away as he sticks his hand in the vase to draw his lot.
I propose that we have a similar scene of lot drawing ahead of competition in this mosaic. Figure (iii) draws.while Figures (i and ii) observe in the interests of fairness. While this type of drawing for lots is best attested for athletics, we also know that a different randomization of order was used in the circus (past posts). The Patras mosaic to which we will return below provides clear points of commonality between athletic and artistic competitions.
Object (v) is the other major oddity which sparked my deep interest (obsession?) with this mosaic since our visit last week to Piazza Armerina. A red ‘donut’ with five circles radiating out from the top half with the letters A, B, Γ, Δ, E. I failed to get a copy of the label on the site, but I’m positive it suggested these were musical notes and possibly an instrument. This cannot be right. Musical notation worked on different principles and this resembles no known instrument.
Our best clue is that another such object is depicted in register (E) and it like the amphora, object (iv), rests on a tiered stand made out of blocks.
To this end I decided to look further at depictions of vases in agonistic art. On more than 143 different Roman provincial coin types there is a collection of five balls, nearly always called “apples”. Sometimes there are on the crowns, or next to the crowns on the table. Below I show an example of them under the table next to the vase and another rare example of Victory holding the five balls. I am no means certain these five balls are related to those on the “doughnut” stands in the mosaic, but I consider it a possibility. I see two potential interpretations. These are the balls that go into the vase and are drawn out to determine the order of the competition, or they represent 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th place in the competition. I lean towards the first interpretations. Perhaps after they are drawn out of the urn they are displayed in the order drawn on the stand? Again this is speculation.
A tempting association of letters as indications of priority and associated with crowns comes from the coinage of Side. See the A at the center of the crown. Now the A on the coins of Side is their claim to be the first city among the Neocorates. It also appears on temple pediments, just hanging out in the legend, and on vexillum in coin designs, not just crowns.
RPC X, — (unassigned; ID 62692)
18 cities issued coins with design that is typically described as “dropping a pebble into a (voting?) urn”. In total RPCOnline records 102 coin types with some version of this description spanning the Antonine period down to Valerian.
The mints
The figure with the so called pebble is invariably identified as divine and typically seated. The most common identification is Athena. But their are some interesting personifications esp. the Boule and Agon. However we should not be so certain in these catalogue identifications. All five types attributed to Agon, might equally be attributed to Tyche. The key attributes are a crown (mural? agonistic?) and a palm branch. Of the nine types identified as Boule only one is labeled as such. By contrast with or without pebble and urn when the personification Koinoboulion is identified on a coin she is invariability labeled as such.
I do not take these to be scenes with so called pebbles and urns as celebrating voting but rather the divine hand in the random selection necessary for a fair contest. The same imagery that can be read as put a spherical object (‘pebble’) into an urn, can just as easily be intended to show the object being removed from the same vessel.
The relationship of iconography of a deity with “pebble” (ball) and urn to agonistic events is made clearest by this rather poorly preserved specimen.
Coin of Ariassus under Gordian III: “Agon (?) seated left, dropping pebble into ballot urn and holding palm, facing nude athlete holding palm”
These athletes are not putting “pebbles” into the urn but drawing them out. Notice the two flanking Athletes are looking at the balls to see what place/order they have draw in the competition. The name of the god in whose honor the festival is to be held is in the exergue, Themis. It is no coincidence that so many of the deities identified as dropping pebbles into urns are identified as Themis! RPC VI, 5856 (temporary)
(vi and vii)
Figure vi is badly damaged but figure vii is nearly complete. The two figures interact with one another and bear key similarities. (Of course we have the forehead vs again.) Notice in particular the round protruding objects over their abdomens. This seems a late stylized version of the padded belly of the traditional comic actor. Both figures also hold very thin curved sticks. This type of ‘crook’ is also closely associated with comic actors. See below for pairing of such an object with a comic mask.
Specimen in trade illustrating RRC 384/1 no. 69 (The same symbol pair appears on RRC 412/1 no. 182)
Likewise, tall textured boots were a key costume element for certain comic actors. Notice the over the knee bindings on the right hand figure:
RRC 412/1 no. 180, specimen in trade (The same boots, mask symbol pairing also features on RRC 384/1 no. 210)
Register (E)
The extensive damage to the left half of this register makes interpretation especially difficult. I believe I can determine the remains of 6 overall objects/figures.
(i-iii)
The division of these remains into three objects/figures can be supported by the traces in the middle of pyramidal base made of reddish rectilinear blocks as seen elsewhere in this same mosaic. Perhaps it held another amphora as in the register above, but a narrower one. If this is the case the two objects/figures on either side may be interacting with the urn, i.e. drawing lots. My difficulty with this interpretation is what seems to be bases or rectilinear elements under the more organic forms. Let us interrogate this for each figure.
(i)
There is an S shaped curve of drapery on the left hand side. This is suggestive of cloth perhaps even a cloak on a human form. The irregular black lines on the white ground may indicate folds/pleats in an over garment. This could make the bottom band of a reddish color an undergarment perhaps with blocks of color red-grey-red-grey. I also wonder if there may have been some speculative or casual “restoration” work here that is fooling my eyes. Higher up on the figure(?), at about the the middle of the S shaped drapery there is a narrow horizontal band of alternating red and black tiles. Perhaps representing a belt? From the middle of this belt(?) there is a gentle sweeping line of tiles up to the right perhaps representing drapery over a shoulder. I see no trace of feet or arms.
(iii)
Here again we have alternating almost rectilinear blocks of color below what seems to be drapery. White and black boxes seem to alternate. Is it an undergarment or the base of an object? The impression of drapery seems clear from the irregular dark triangle to the left and the irregular series of circular patterns running in a vertical line on the right. This figure if such it seems to move forward the doughnut stand with the letter balls (iv, illustrated above in discussion of previous register).
(v-vi)
The two figures seem to gaze at each other intensely. Is it anger? A dispute over the contest? Is figure (vi) a judge or perhaps a singer? The lyre player with his plectrum and crown reminds me of the choragos from the Patras mosaic that is directing a group of boys in shorter striped tunics. The comparison is not perfect but suggestive.
So what?
I don’t think I’m done with this accidental project. I certainly have more I want to know and think about but this this the end of the first step. Observation. I always prefer to begin with articulating what I see and only then reading other perspectives on the same subjects.
My final thought is after looking at the groupings on the Patras mosaic I’m more convinced that we are seeing different competitive categories: tragedy, comedy, instrumental and choral performance. I suspect there may be a fifth category I cannot yet name or recognize. It will come in time.
Liv Mariah Yarrow 
