Dammit.  I hate when I think I agree with Crawford and then start scratching the surface…  This is RRC 294/1 (Dated 113/112 Crawford, 110 Mattingly).

The problem: gladiators don’t fight with whips.   Or if they do I cannot find a textual reference (and I’m pretty good at that). Also, , the man with a whip is clearly dominant and also armed with a sheathed sword.

Crawford is in agreement with Smith 1875. But the Tertullian (de Spec. 21.4) cited by Smith is useless as it just has the gladiators made to fight by attendants with whips, and that is also in Seneca.  Whips are how you control slaves.

The alternate view is that the type depicts a scene of slave suppression (Numismatic Circular 11; Crawford also attributes this ‘fantastic explanation’ to Babelon; so also Grueber in BMCRR).

Lots of these sources make the senior T. Didius (father of cos. 98) a praetor in 138 BCE fighting slaves in Sicily.  And it is true we don’t know who was fighting slaves in Sicily that year and there is gap in our known Praetors that would accommodate Didius, but we’ve got no other testimony beyond this coin it seems (Here I’m following MRR who does not include Didius Sr. in any rank above Tr. Pl.).

I have an itch in the back of my brain that the scene of former enslavers cowing the self-liberating enslaved by laying down arms and picking up the whip.  This is a scene from a Massinger play set in Sicily during the Roman slave revolt.  But I swear that is not where I have it from.  I know my ancient texts better than my early modern dramas….

AND YES! I found it … (OR rather Edwards 1964 did)  its from Herodotus or Trogus:

So Crawford is right that it isn’t attested in the Sicilian Slave War but it is an ancient historical trope!  I hate changing my mind but I really can’t see this as a gladiatorial combat scene.

“Men of Scythia, see what we are about! We are fighting our own slaves; they slay us, and we grow fewer; we slay them, and thereafter shall have fewer slaves. Now therefore my counsel is that we drop our spears and bows, and go to meet them each with his horsewhip in hand. As long as they saw us armed, they thought themselves to be our peers and the sons of our peers; let them see us with whips and no weapons of war, and they will perceive that they are our slaves; and taking this to heart they will not abide our attack.”

My husband and I enjoy falling asleep to Herodotus which is why this is so familiar

Later Follow up Post

(Or Gryphon.  Spelling variations make searching for coins on my blog a pain.)

RRC 384/1

Update 1-20-23:

This post should have had Lanuvium, Lavinium, Juno, and Papius as key words.

I must read more about the Pantanacci finds.

Carroll, Maureen. 2019. “MATER MATUTA, ‘FERTILITY CULTS’ AND THE INTEGRATION OF WOMEN IN RELIGIOUS LIFE IN ITALY IN THE FOURTH TO FIRST CENTURIES BC.” Papers of the British School at Rome 87 (10): 1-45. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068246218000399.

” RPC 919 var. (date?). Sear, Imperators 587 var. (same). Buttrey, Studies in Numismatic Method Presented to Philip Grierson, 36. “

Crawford 30

So I was thinking about the second of these coin above, the one from Paestum, and that got me looking at this older post.  The implication of Cicero’s passage seems to be that magistrates in the provinces have lictors but they carry staffs not fasces.  If so, what are these fasces doing on the Paestum coin? Surely Cicero must be wrong, cf. Tomb of Cartilius Poplicola.

My other concern about the Paestum fasces feels more serious.  How would a magistrate at Paestum have axes?!  A symbol of military authority outside the city of Rome…

The top coin is just bonus.

How is it possible I could be letting so much precious writing time slip by obsessing about the coins of Paestum while trying to just find a few decent images for  this last chapter?! 

How is it possible I don’t have a copy of RPC vol 1 to hand?  Do you?  Do you want to tell me if this coin from Paris is listed there?

It comes up on image searches for Paestum in their database but is not in Crawford or HN Italy.  It certainly looks like Paestum …

The rendering of Cybele reminds me of her look on RRC 332/1.

Also notice the highlighted tongs and anvil which may well refer to the office of the moneyership, cf. RRC 464/2:

There are other Paestum coins that refer to striking.  I’ve come to think that coin (after jump) is likely inspired by the Caepio Piso issue, RRC 330/1.

The figure on the reverse is clearly a mistress of the beasts type representation, maybe Artemis of Ephesus, but perhaps a manifestation of Cybele herself?

I really admire this visual from Brackendorf 1998: 491 as a means of explaining how we assume coin types will be represented in hoards over time.

See Comments for Fuller Refs.

 

Tellus Stabilis is a goddess from the coinage from age of Hadrian onwards.  Notice she is not holding a rake as the catalogues say, that’s a yoke.

The other attributes are the short tunic of the farmer, the plow and two ears of grain.

This adjective and noun combination don’t appear in the extant corpus of classical literary Latin or the corpus of published inscriptions.  What does appear in epic poetry is the instabilis tellus!  Both Silus Italicus’ Punica and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, both in cosmological scenes.

This is BM 1867,0101.1124.  It is die linked to one of the few (only?) authentic Republican dies ever found, now in the Madrid Collection. 

The quaestor who issued this L. Fabius. L. f. Hispaniensis defected to Sertorius:

The location in which the die was found (near Orange) puts into question Crawford’s assumption that Fabius’ coins were struck in Italy.

I don’t believe this explanation of RRC 402/1 but it is still interesting to have on file as one in the range of interpretations that have been put forward:

From Nousek 2008.

Grateful for the comments that pointed me to a parallel, but more fully argued discussion by Harlan!

I’ve now found three references to three separate sling shot bullets with Sertorius’ name and title and also on the other side the word Pietas from Three distinct locations (map below).  Borja Díaz Ariño 2005 (quoted below) knows 5, and these three here may be in addition to those he documents (this is far from certain).

The phenomena has been interpreted in these ways:

Cf. also p. 113 of the same book.

UPDATE, best overview I’ve found so far:

Via Twitter Hannah Cornwell provides comparative evidence:

“Just checked: the Deities from the Sicily shots are not abstractions (Athena, Artemis, ‘the Mother’, Herakles, Zeus Keraunos). IG v.14. 608-10, no. 2407; also Chiron 12 (1982) 238-44.”

Context from Daremberg and Saglio.

Update 2/8/2022:

I tweeted about Perusine Glandes a long time back specifically the sexually explicit references to Fulvia. I was frustrated at how hard it was to find the citation not on the blog so I’m adding that old info to this post so they can be more easily found. (I think i put it in my teaching material at the time).

Benedetti, Lucio. 2012. Glandes Perusinae: revisione e aggiornamenti

Update 1-20-23:

Pompey or Pompeius Sextus sling bullet with CN.MAC IMP inscription not unlike coinage (cf. this post on RRC 402/1).

Then [Fimbria] hired a slave, with money and the promise of freedom, to go to Sulla as a pretended deserter and assassinate him. As the slave was nearing his task he became frightened, and thus fell under suspicion, was arrested and confessed. Sulla’s soldiers who were stationed around Fimbria’s camp were filled with anger and contempt for him. They reviled him and nicknamed him Athenio – a man who was once a king of fugitive slaves in Sicily for a few days.

Appian Mithridatic Wars 59