Finally a good photograph of this one of a kind specimen (RRC 358/1)!  I love the progress we’re making in digital numismatics.   Here’s the permalink to the Berlin museum entry.

My earlier post on the type.  (I still agree with my observations there.)

I’ve speculated on this type (RRC 404/1) before.  I am still concerned with the stick the figure in the chariot is holding.  “Magistrate’s staff” is highly unsatisfactory.  Magistrates didn’t really have ceremonial staves in republican Roman.  It’s hard to demonstrate a negative, but I will point out that in both Polybius and Pliny, the stick used to draw a circle around Antiochus Epiphanes, is explicitly in the magistrate’s hand by chance (Plb. 29.27.5 and Plin. 34.10).

Sceptres are the provenance of gods, kings, and maybe triumphators (see Braund and also here).   They certainly symbolize dominion (Cf. RRC 393/1; 398/1; 435/1 and many more types).  Roman magistrates don’t hold them.

The only type of rod or stick associated with magistrates is the vindicata used in manumission ceremonies.  I’ve not found any evidence for its use/presence outside this context (basic search).

What else can we say about this figure?  The die cutters really want to emphasize his toga.  This means not a god almost certainly an intended legendary or once living Roman.

This biga (clearly ceremonial) is also a very odd choice.  This is not how magistrates normally traveled around.  I think it is this that gives us our biggest clue:

This is Versnel (of course!).  The main function of the praetor urbanus was judicial oversight.  And, we have at least one instance (L. Cassius Longinus) of an urban praetor having responsibilities for the grain supply of the city (Brennan, Praetorship, 460-1) and other earlier instances of the praetor urbanus being involved in agrarian matters (ibid., 99, 108).    The praetor urbanus is given very specific responsibilities in the lex agraria of 111 BC (1.73, 2.73-4; 2.83-84).

I have a hard time seeing the coin as anything other than the celebration of a urban praetorship.   BUT we don’t have a Vettius known in this role…  Not that our records are complete.  Very troublesome.

Here’s a highly speculative thought…

What if, Vettius is well enough connected that this piece is serving as an attempt at repairing  Verres’ image…

Vettius was Verres’ quaestor in Sicily AND his brother-in-law, being the brother of Vettius’ wife and Verres’ as praetor urbanus is presumed to have given successful ludi Apollinares….

From Brennan:

No one can agree on the date of this coin.

Mattingly would like 72 BC to put it before his quaestorship I presume.

Crawford has 70 BC, and Hollstein a conservative c.69.

Hersh and Walker would put it in 66!

It was also in the forum that there was the picture of the ‘Old Shepherd with his Staff’, about which the Teuton envoy when asked what he thought was the value of it said that he would rather not have even the living original as a gift!

Pliny, NH 35.8

I think this passage helps explain the popularity of this gemstone type in the Republic:

(Thornvaldsen I1139)

(Thornvaldsen I1143)

(I’ve published on this iconography previously.)

Addendum:

A not very old shepherd appears on the frieze from the “Tomb of the  Statilii” north side.

Landscape from the villa of Agrippa Postumus (20 BC – AD 10) at Boscotrecase, nearby Pompeii – Naples, Archaeological Museum

I’ve been on a Macedonian iconography kick.  I’ve started to see it everywhere:

This is a jasper intaglio from the Thornvaldsen Museum ( I1166).

This is RRC 448/3. The series as a whole celebrates Caesar’s victories in Gaul.  Was this what Artemis looked like in Massilia and by extension what she looked like on the Aventine?    It bears little resemble to Artemis on Massilia’s own coinage.  The Cambridge Ancient History endorses the reading of Strabo 4.1.5 against this coin:

what is more, the xoanon of that Artemis which is on the Aventine Hill was constructed by the Romans on the same artistic design as the xoanon which the Massiliotes have. But at the time of Pompey’s sedition against Caesar they joined the conquered party and thus threw away the greater part of their prosperity.

But how reliable is this testimony of Strabo?  Just before he’s said that

We know well what Artemis of Ephesus looks like and it is not much like the coin image above…

Here’s the CAH:

Just wanted to juxtapose the image and the text for later reference:

RRC 414/1:

Ando (p.106):

 

Stannard is the man to go to on this topic! (and nicely he makes his work accessible by academia.edu!).  Here’s the specimen from the RBW collection that sparked my interest:

Still on RRC 372/1.  (See previous post).  I am worried that the togate figure (be he Servius or not!) does not have his head covered while he’s using the priestly implement, we now know as an aspergillum (not a real Latin word!), to sprinkle the heifer.  Which got me on to the worship form for Diana at the Aventine, which brings me to a bunch of well known inscriptions.

Green:

Ando (besides this below, he also have as whole article dedicated to Diana on the Aventine):

Cornell:

Also see Goldhill on local identity using this lex as a case study.

On this theme, please now see pages 103-104 (fig. 2.55) of my 2021 book.

---

I’m thinking about potential connections between RRC 372/1 and RRC 334/1.  This is building off of an old post of mine.

These are the only two scenes of sacrifice on the republican series, other than those which show the creating of a foedus (oath scenes with a pig).

Anyway.  I just wanted throw up this 1924 commentary on Plutarch’s Roman Questions.

Vir. Illus. 7 and Cic. Att. 15.17

The question is: was the de Viris Illustribus actually preserving an alternative ancient tradition or was it just an error?  Antro in Cicero appears to be a freedman and Antro his slave name which are often chosen for ethnic connotations  (cf. Cic. Fam. 15.20.1).

Curiatius is a name most associated with Alba in Latin literature (general survey, but note esp. Livy 1.30).

 

 

Pliny NH 25.21: that Drusus among us, most illustrious of our tribunes of the people, who was cheered by all the commons standing before him but charged by the aristocrats with causing the Marsic War, was on the island of Anticyra cured of epilepsy by means of this medicine. For there it is very safe to take the drug because they add to it sesamoides, as I have already said. In Italy it is called veratrum.

Pliny NH 28.41: Drusus, tribune of the people, is reported to have drunk goat’s blood because he wished, by his pallor, to accuse his enemy Q. Caepio of having poisoned him, and so to arouse hatred against him.

Pliny NH 33.6: Also it was from a ring put up for sale by auction that the quarrel between Caepio and Drusus began which was the primary cause of the war with the allies and the disasters that sprang from it. Not even at that period did all members of the senate possess gold rings…

Pliny NH 33.13: Livius Drusus when holding the office of tribune of the plebs alloyed the silver with one-eighth part of bronze.

Pliny NH 33.50: His brother Allobrogicus was the first person who ever owned 1000 lbs. weight of silver, whereas Livius Drusus when tribune of the people had 10,000 lbs.

Excepting the first, all these passages suggest a tradition that casts Drusus as motivated by avarice and fundamentally dishonest.

(Online translation of the Natural Histories)