adventures in my head
This is one for the best diagrams of casting I’ve seen.
From:
Jin, Cao. “The Chinese Way of Minting: Comparative Perspectives on Coin Production before Mechanisation”. In Southwest China in a Regional and Global Perspective (c.1600-1911), (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2018), 184–223. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004353718_008
I’m thinking about trend lines and what it means that three different statistical measures of variation return different results. I’ve slowed down in my drafting of the actual chapter so I’m going to blog a little to see if I can’t figure out what I think.
In plain English (or my attempt thereof):
SD measures how spread out all weights are from the average (mean).
IQR measures how spread out out the middle 50% of the weights are from the midpoint (median).
MAD is the average distance between the mean and the individual weights.
IQR and MAD are less likely to be effected by data outliers.
Here are pics (again sorry about the boring grey):
SD:
If we just looked at SD we could say that the trendline of RRC 14 regardless of dataset was flatter. I.e. that the overall pattern that small denominations were made with less conformity to a weight standard would be a more pronounced feature of RRC 18. OR to put it another way SD makes RRC 18 looks it becomes slopier faster in the lower denomination if over all has less variation than RRC 14. Maybe only that last point is relevant maybe the angle of the trendline is less historically meaningful?
IQR:
IQR starts to get messy. According to CRRO data RRC 18 demonstrates more variation than RRC 14, whereas Haeberlin suggests the reverse. Both of these things cannot be true of the original population (all RRC 18 and all RRC 14 made). One dataset must be a more accurate reflection of the original population than the other. Which do I believe?
Haeberlin is bigger. But he might have been more dismissive of outlier. BUT IQR is supposed to be less effected by outliers.
CRRO is smaller. But maybe the weights are more ‘modern’ (as long as the objects were re weighed and not just copied off of ancient tags which lets be realistic they may well have been). It shows more variation by every measure in all instances. Is its data not uniform because the sample sizes are too small? OR because museum collections record everything?
Here for Haeberlin, RRC 14 has a flatter trend line than RRC 18. BUT for CRRO, RRC 18 has a flatter trendline than RRC 14. Again both cannot be true of the original population.
MAD:
MAD is just as messy. Again we have a historical impossibility: CRRO data RRC 18 demonstrates more variation than RRC 14, whereas Haeberlin suggests the reverse.
Here for Both CRRO and Haeberlin, RRC 14 has a flatter trendline than RRC 18. This agrees with the picture of the SD but not the IQR. However here as compared to SD the trend is much more pronounced.
I find myself leaning towards Haeberlin. Why? I like the consistence through all three measures. Is this a good reason? I am doubtful of that. The larger sample size is also comforting. But is he accurate? I think so. I did some weighing in Copenhagen and it was reassuring. I need to cross reference my notes on my reweighing with the printed weights in Haeberlin still but the curator thought Haeberlin’s weights were those on the tags and if so then they were pretty close to my reweighing…….. Okay I’ll let this sit a bit in my brain.
I had a great data crunching / writing day yesterday. This is for my metrology paper on early aes grave (RRC 14 and 18). Then I got off the charts and bar graphs with trendlines and onto histograms. Excel has a lovely function (buried deep in the bowels of the programming) that lets you change the number of bins. This changes the shape of the data. All are true, but all also give a different impression.
Here are the weights of RRC 14/1 as reported by Haeberlin 1910 in both a 20-bin histogram and also a 10-bin histogram. (I obsessively tried out each number of bins from 4 to 25, but I won’t put them all up–its a little obscene. It would be so cool if one could create a little video of these shifting pictures.) The 10-bin histogram shows the strong tendency for weights to be in this 304-336g range, but the 20-bin helps us see better that steep drop off after 344g and the difference in the data shape between too light specimens and too heavy specimens.
I cannot actually put multiple histograms for each type into this article but I do want to communicate the way the histogram is just helping us see the shape of the data, not necessarily a static picture. I sort of feel I need to know more about exploratory statistics, but I also want to get better at drawing pictures and communicating what we can see in the numbers. The numbers themselves often put people off, as do statistical concepts/formulae/jargon.
I’m writing here in hopes it might dawn on me as I write which picture or pictures are most important for this article. Inspiration has not struck. I’m going to keep throwing in charts and cut later. We’ll see where I end up.
(Sorry the charts are boring gray, but they will be cheaper to publish that way, even if poor for the blog.)
This story is included here as it may amuse some fellow numismatists.
Like the good numismatist I am I love shiny things, especially silver shiny things. I don’t collect coins BUT I do let myself buy silver plate serving dishes for my holiday table. My favorite are ones that look Victorian (like my house), but hide early oven safe super strong Pyrex; they usually cost about 20 bucks at the antiques malls and are highly functional. I blame my grandmother for giving me some delightfully silly silver plate water goblets she got for her wedding in the fifties when she was divorcing my grandfather in my early teen years. I now serve my kiddos and their friends ‘decoys’ in these goblets. [Decoy is our family name for any drink with a garnish and ice cubes you serve to kids when adults are having adult beverages.]
Anyway, I wanted all my silver plate be extra shiny for the big feast day and I’m avoidant of the time and work of traditional polishing in volume. So, of course I start my biggest stock pot boiling with a mixture of baking soda and strips of aluminum foil and plan on dunking each piece. However, this year I have acquired an extra big dish and I’m rushing through the utensils and I start dripping water on the stove.
It’s a gas range so no big deal, I think. WRONG. It has a hard wired burner igniters. Baking soda is a salt and thus conductive of electricity. It closes the circuit. All the circuits on all the burners! Which now won’t stop sparking! We can’t cut the power because our oven is on the same circuit breaker and that would mean no turkey (a 28 pound bird this year!). The stove is now unusable and we are expecting 24 loved ones to arrive for dinner shortly.
My beloved calls in a kindly neighbor and with only minimal electrocution of their fingers they together manage to disassemble the built in countertop stove, cut the power there, reassemble, and then move to manual lighting of the burners.
Next year I plan to polish the silver plate at least a day ahead and be a little more careful. Maybe I’ll even try just doing in the bath tub and pour in kettlefuls of boiling water. I’ll let you know.
Ancestral inflation is nothing new, but the passage below is just a nice parallel for the fake “TER” (third triumph) claimed on RRC 415/1 (61 BCE).
N.B. Crawford tries to make this coin accurate by having it refer to times hailed imperator. He says the (false) three triumph tradition is a ‘late’ but ILLRP 392 which he cites as support is dated to the c. 57-56 BCE and associated with the restoration of the Fornix Fabianus.
“As to the statue of Africanus—what a mass of confusion! But that was just what interested me in your letter. Do you really mean it? Does the present Metellus Scipio [cf. RRC 459 and 460] not know that his great-grandfather was never censor? Why, the statue placed at a high elevation in the temple of Ops had no inscription except COS, while on the statue near the Hercules of Polycles there is also the inscription COS CENS, and that this is the statue of the same man is proved by attitude, dress, ring, and the likeness itself.
“But, by Hercules, when I observed in the group of gilded equestrian statues, placed by the present Metellus on the Capitol, a statue of Africanus with the name of Serapio inscribed under it, I thought it a mistake of the workman. I now see that it is an error of Metellus’s. What a shocking historical blunder!
“That statement of mine about Flavius and the Fasti, if it is a blunder, is common currency. You were quite right to raise the question.
“I followed the opinion which runs through nearly all historians, as is often the case with Greek writers. For example, do they not all say that Eupolis, the poet of the old comedy, was thrown into the sea by Alcibiades on his voyage to Sicily? Eratosthenes disproves it: for he produces some plays exhibited by him after that date. Is that careful historian, Duris of Samos, laughed out of court because he, in common with many others, made this mistake? Has not, again, every writer affirmed that Zaleucus drew up a constitution for the Locrians? Are we on that account to regard Theophrastus as utterly discredited, because your favourite Timaeus attacked his statement?
But not to know that one’s own great-grandfather was never censor is discreditable, especially as since his consulship no Cornelius was censor in his lifetime.”
(I’ve tweaked the Public Domain translation to reflect Shackleton Bailey’s readings)
I was reading the Cicero’s letters from 50 BCE as he’s preparing to leaving his province (was looking for a reference on Credit systems I half remember, haven’t found it yet).
Now I’m worried I’ve misinterpreted Q. Cassius’ political position in 55 BCE in my forthcoming book and am wondering if it is too late to tweak it before it comes out: typescript is submitted and we should be in production soon.
I’ve read Cassius’ types (RRC 428/1-3) as a rejection of the (so-called) First Triumvirate… BUT how the heck does that square with this (Cic. Att. 6.6.4):
“… Then there is this consideration: Pompey— so strong a man and in so secure a position—selected Q. Cassius without regard to the lot; Caesar did the same in the case of Antony: was I to put such a slight on one regularly assigned me by lot…”
Was his selection by Pompey a ‘gift’ to “win friends and influence people”? Is this Pompey trying to bring Cassius over to his ‘side’? OR, was Cassius already entangled with Pompey and I’m reading his types all wrong. Then again by 49 50 he’s clearly a Caesarean….DPRR (below) doesn’t take into consideration Shakleton Bailey’s work in Cicero’s letters: 6.8 dates to 1 Oct 50 BCE and was written from Ephesus.
Batonius, however, brought news about Caesar that is really terrifying, and he enlarged still more on the subject in Conversation with Lepta. I hope what he said was false, but it is certainly alarming: that he would on no account dismiss his army; that Of the magistrates-elect the praetors, Cassius the tribune, Lentulus the consul, side with him; that Pompey is thinking of leaving the city.
I just don’t know what to make of this (yet) and it bothers me.
Here’s the DPRR entry:
Here’s the portion of the book as sent to the publisher already:
2.23. RRC 428/2, 55 BCE, denarius, 3.82 grams, ANS 1948.19.203; obverse: head of Libertas, Q·CASSIVS before, LIBERT behind; reverse: temple of Vesta with curule chair inside, flanked by urn and voting ballot with A C; moneyer: probably Q. Cassius Longinus, q. 52 BCE.
Other types of these two years [i.e. 56-55 BCE] that seem to be in opposition to the ascendancy of Pompey and the ‘triumvirate’ simultaneously memorialize the actions of the moneyer’s own ancestors, and promote alternate values which have a central position for both the state and the moneyer’s own family. Q. Cassius Longinus celebrates three major acts in the career of his ancestor L. Cassius Longinus Ravilla, consul of 127 BCE. As tribune in 137 BCE, he carried a law that extended the use of the secret ballot to public trials. Cicero sums up the controversy in 56 BCE around this historical act thus:
The people thought their liberty was at stake; the leading men (principes) dissented, and for the safety of the best men (optimatium), they feared the audacity of the multitude, and the license of the secret ballot. (Cicero, For Sestius 103; author’s translation)[1]
Just as in Cicero’s rhetoric, one of the coins explicitly juxtaposes the image of Libertas, the personification of liberty, with the images of the secret ballot (2.23).[2] The moneyer of 55 BCE is not the first to refer to the secret ballot on the Republican coin series: in fact there are numerous other references, including two by other members of his own gens (4.4.1).[3] The other ‘popular’ act of Ravilla was his service as chief judge against the delinquent Vestal Virgins in 113 BCE: he condemned two Vestals, Marcia and Licinia, previously exonerated by the pontifex maximus, L. Caecilius Metellus, who had only condemned Aemilia.[4] Cassius may have chosen to emphasize this trial partly because of how it disgraced the Licinii Crassi, the family of his pro-Pompeian fellow-moneyer and Pompey’s own co-consul. Their ancestor, the famous orator Crassus, failed to aid their other family member, the Vestal Licinia, even with his powerful, well-remembered defense.[5] Why was the condemnation of the Vestals ‘popular’? The well-being of the community was as a whole dependent on maintaining correct relations with the gods (cf. 4.2.1). To exonerate guilty Vestals because of pressures from their elite families endangered the whole community.
2.24. RRC 428/3, 55 BCE, denarius, 3.74 grams, ANS 1944.100.2636; obverse: youthful head of the Genius of the Roman People, scepter over shoulder; reverse: eagle on a thunderbolt, flanked by lituus (augur’s staff) and jug, Q·CASSIVS beneath; moneyer: same as last. In Roman thought, anyone or almost anything could have a genius (male) or juno (female), an idea encompassing both the guardian spirit and the sacred essence or even soul of that thing or person.
Another coin type alludes to the sovereignty of the Roman people themselves through the image of the Genius of the Roman People with regal scepter and Jupiter’s eagle on a thunderbolt, a common representation of imperium (2.24).[6] In this reference to sovereignty, there may also be an allusion to the lex Cassia of 104 BCE, which removed from the Senate any one condemned by the people or who had their imperium revoked by the Roman people. The law, like the coin type, emphasizes that sovereignty at Rome rests not in the individual or the Senate, but with the people themselves.[7]
[1] He spoke more favorably of it in 65 BCE when defending Cornelius: “The Cassian Law under which the right and power inherent in the suffrage was restored to health and strength”. Preserved in Ascon. 78C. On liberty and the secret ballot, see also Cic. Planc. 16, 54 BCE.
[2] Cf. Feig Vishnia 2008.
[3] Arena 2012: 57; Bruce 1997.
[4] Ascon. 45-46.
[5] Rhet. Her. 4.47 and Cic. Brut. 159.
[6] On sovereignty of the people as a popular position, ANRW 5 (1981): 853 and Cic. Planc. 11, 54 BCE.
[7] Ascon. 78C.
That Cato?! really?! Why am I only learning about this now?
“SICILY, Panormos. Circa 208-180 BC. Æ (22mm, 5.40 g, 12h). Cato, quaestor. Laureate head of Zeus left / Warrior standing left, holding phiale and spear; CATO and monogram to left, shield to right. BAR Issue 12; CNS 129; HGC 2, 1071.”
Does the monogram resolve as PANORM… in Greek? I’m not confident on this.
There just aren’t that many Catos and finding one doing something in Sicily really only leaves Cato the Elder:
From DPRR where you can check my research.
I’m just so excited to think Cato the Elder made a coin and stuck his name on it… Seems to good to be true.
The same type with same monogram and different Romans are also known:
[Concordia, Harmony, Concord, etc…]
“SICILY, the Krimissan Alliance. Circa 320 BC. AR Hemidrachm (2.72 gm). OMONOIA, laureate female head (Homonoia or Concordia) right / KIMISS-AIWN, flaming horned altar, garlanded, with branches at sides. Jameson 559; Basel 346 (same dies); discussed by A.J. Evans, “On an Alliance Coin of Western Sicily, with the Altar of the Krimissos,” NumChron 1896, pg.140-143. … Evans suggests that this coin depicts an altar near the Krimissos river and the alliance (Homonoia) between two or more cities of the region, probably Segesta and Panormos.”
Sometimes when I map data it feels like I learn something radical and new. Sometimes it feels like I spent a lot of time to see for myself what every catalogue entry summarizes…. This was a case of the latter. Still, let no work be wasted so here it is.
The first map shows all finds mentioned by Crawford 2002 in CH 9, p. 269-70. Big dots represent 4+ specimens, medium dots ~2 specimens, little dots a solo specimen.
Crawford questions as others have before him an association with Tuder (Todi) and wonders if possibly the presence of one in a votive deposit at Orvieto means it the series might be better attributed to the Volsinii. In his typical fashion Crawford is dismissive of other scholarship in this cases other finds reported in Ambrosini 1997 (must ILL).
Light blue circles Orvieto, orange Todi. I can’t say one really fits the distribution better than the other… Vecchi 2014 doesn’t commit, but nods in Crawford’s line of thought.
GPS Points used:
| Orvieto | 2 | 42.718333, 12.110278 | ||
| Tolfa | 1 | 42.149722, 11.936667 | ||
| Vicarello | 1 | 43.613611, 10.464444 | ||
| Tarquinia | 1 | 42.249167, 11.756111 | ||
| Vulci | 3+ | 42.418889, 11.631667 | ||
| Talamone | 1 | 42.555056, 11.132755 | ||
| Vetulonia | 2 | 42.859444, 10.971111 | ||
| Siena | 4+ | 43.318611, 11.330556 | ||
| Castilglione del Lago | 2 | 43.138611, 12.047778 | ||
| Perugia | 1 | 43.112222, 12.388889 | ||
| Spoleto | 1 | 42.756479, 12.68547 | ||
| Cecanibbi | 1 | 42.778889, 12.414167 | ||
| Ripabianca | 1 | 42.940278, 12.404167 | ? | |
| Campo La Piana, Nocera Umbra | 1 | 43.116667, 12.783333 | ? | |
| Montignano | 1 | 42.677778, 11.756944 | ? | |
| Valle Fuino | 1 | 42.731667, 13.016667 | Cascia | |
| Ancarano | 1 | 42.833333, 13.733333 | ||
| Sabina | 1 | 41.616667, 13.8 | Altina | |
| Carsóli | 4 | 42.1, 13.083333 | ||
| Trento | 1 | 46.066667, 11.116667 | ||
| Comacchio | 1 | 44.7, 12.183333 | ||
| Termoli | 1 | 42, 14.983333 | ||
| Morgantina | 1 | 37.430833, 14.479444 | ||
Obviously thinking about parallels to Roman or otherwise aes grave.
Largely CAST!, typically dated to 450-415 period. 3-pellet type most common= Trionkion or Tetras. 4-pellet also known = Trias or tetronkion. 2-pellet = Hexas
There also silver fractions with five pellets usually dated to the early 5th century
also has cast bronze denominations with 1, 2, 3, 4 pellets. 6 pellets are known in struck coinage.
The “Onkia” doesn’t have a denomination mark, but it’s fab design is clearly intended to flag its place in the denomination system:
2 – pellet:
3-pellet:
4-pellet:
Struck variations also exist:
3-pellet typically dated 420-405 BCE seems most common
1-pellets are also known
Himera, last quarter of the fifth century onwards (links to ANS specimens)
Base-12 system, six-pellet, three pellet seem most common, some four pellets
Gela, last quarter of the fifth century – links to specimens in trade
3-pellet and 1-pellet seem most common, assume this means a base-12 system too
Syracuse, last quarter of the fifth century – links to specimens in trade
3-pellet and 1-pellet seem most common, again I assume this means a base-12 system
Lipara, Syracuse (many AR with four spoked wheel), Akragas, Piakos, Mytistratos (mid 4th cent?), Panormos (fine rooster! and some with Punic script), Himera, Mamar, Solus (Solos, Soloi), Kamarina (?), Naxos (also silver version), Entella, Leontini, Kentoripai
4-pellet piece from Segesta misidentified as hemilitron, also Motya AR piece,
La valeur des monnaies grecques en bronze / Olivier Picard. Revue Numismatique Vol. 153, 1998, p. [7]-18.
Liv Mariah Yarrow 