Aeneas – Liv Mariah Yarrow

More on the Iconography of the Penates

October 11, 2015June 30, 2017 Liv YarrowLeave a comment

Capture1 — Detail of the Ara Pacis panel showing the Aeneas offering sacrifice

In past posts, I’ve worried quite a bit about the penates. I may have to write this all up eventually as a proper article or something. I’m still working on Dionysius ahead of my Yale talk this coming Saturday. And, my work led me back to passage on the Penates in book 1. And I found this comment by A. E. Dumser on the aedes Penates on the Mapping Augustan Rome Website.

Here are some more images just for further context:

ara-pacis-ng — Notice the prominent placement of this panel and even the depiction of the Penates shrine itself in relation to the monument as a whole. Aeneas’ piety is echoed by the piety of the those who are participating in the sacrifice at this very altar.

Update 6/30/17 – just a bibliographical reference for when I come back to the penates:

M. Stöckinger, Inalienable Possessions : the di penates in the Aeneid and in Augustan Culture, p. 129-48 in Mario Labate, Gianpiero Rosati (ed.), La costruzione del mito augusteo. Bibliothek der klassischen Altertumswissenschaften, Band 141. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2013. ISBN 9783825361136.

302 out of 410 days: Lycophron and Rome’s Foundations

April 16, 2014 Liv YarrowLeave a comment

RRC 16/1a. ANS 1969.83.7. Image links to all ANS specimens of this type.

I came across the passage of Crawford below and decided I might kick the main discussion of the type above out of the chapter I’m working on at the moment (Rome and Italy) and put it in the previous one (The Legendary Past).

Since Crawford wrote this passage (RRC II.714) thinking about Lycophron and Roman foundation legends has developed. Here’s Wiseman’s translation of the relevant passage from his Remus:

Coin geeks will know Aphrodite Castnia from the coins of Metropolis in Thessaly [links to an example with a side story from the collector illuminating acquisition practices]. Literary buffs will be more likely to reference Callimachus Iambus 10; Kerkhecker 1999: 207:

[Other relevant bibliography on Callimachus includes Clayman 1980 and Acosta-Hughes 2002.]

Wiseman 1995 has shown many ways lions may be present in the now lost myths of the foundation of Rome before the establishment of the Romulus and Remus tradition (p. 63ff) and has endorsed Stephanie West’s dating of the above passage and others to the second century (181 n. 5).

The lion and goddess seem to me very much in the South Italian and Sicilian repertoire of iconography (cf. Velia and Syracuse for Lions among other mints), evoking power and divine protection, but not necessarily an intersection with a specific foundation narrative.

And I’m still moving away from Russo’s suggestion that RRC 16, 17, and 23 form a series, amongst other reasons already discussed, because of Crawford’s comments about the different circulation patterns of RRC 16 and 17 in CMRR, p. 38 with App. 9 (p. 285) listing hoards.

Rhodios, founder of Rome

February 9, 2014 Liv YarrowLeave a comment

Mosaic with a wolf suckling twins at Ma’arrat al-Nu’man, Syria, with inscription showing that the mosaic came from a hospital built in 511.

The first time I saw an image of this mosaic I thought the spellings of the names very odd. PWMYΛΛΟC and PWΔC, except the delta looks like it has a tail like a funny iota script. So perhaps its reads PWAiC, but that doesn’t make much sense either. At with point I stopped worrying about it because its way after my period and just a distraction from getting this book done.

Then today I started thinking about that odd letter in the twin’s name who isn’t Romyllos or Romulus or however you want to spell it. I was reading Wiseman’s chapter on L. Brutus in his Unwritten Rome (2008) and I read this fragment of Alcimus (FGrH 560 F 4 = Festus 326-8L):

Alcimus says that Romulus was the son of Aeneas’ wife Tyrrhenia, and from Romulus was born Aeneas’ granddaughter Alba, whose son, called Rhodius, founded Rome.

Wiseman goes on (p. 302 ff.) to explain that ardea means heron and so does rhodios in Greek and so this passage is about Ardea claiming to be founder of Rome.

Anyways. I doubt a late Syrian mosaicist was following Alcimus or anything.

Catanaean Brothers

February 7, 2014February 27, 2014 Liv Yarrow1 Comment

I’m trying to make up my mind whether I think RRC 308/1 represents one of the Catanaean Brothers as most scholars think or if I am swayed at all by Evans’ claim that it is really Aeneas. Above is a coin of Catana showing the brothers. Here is the Republican coin:

There two literary accounts of the brothers. One is Hyginus’ list . I give the two proceeding entries and the two after for context:

[254] CCLIV. THOSE WHO WERE EXCEPTIONALLY DUTIFUL

…
Xanthippe, when her father Mycon was shut up in prison, nourished him with her own milk.
Tyro, daughter of Salmoneus, killed her sons on account of her father.
In Sicily when Mount Aetna first began to burn, Damon rescued his mother from the fire, and Phintias his father, too.
Aeneas, likewise, in Troy bore out from the fire his father Anchises on his shoulders, and rescued Ascanius his son.
Cleops and Bitias were sons of Cydippe, a priestess of Argive Juno.

…

The juxtapostion and connection of the brothers with Aeneas suggests that in the Augustan period at least they were linked together. This makes sense in light of Sextus Pompeius Pius’ coin type:

The other literary source is the anonymous poem Aetna. The story serves as its closing climax:

Once Aetna burst open its caverns and glowed white-hot: as though its deep-pent furnaces were shattered, a vast wave of fire gushed forth afar upborne by the heat of the lava-stone, just as when the ether lightens under the fury of Jupiter and plagues the bright sky with murky gloom. Corn-crops in the fields and acres soft-waving under cultivation were ablaze with their lords. Forests and hills gleamed red. … They think they have escaped, but the fire catches them: it consumes its prisoners’ booty: and the conflagration feeds itself, set on sparing none or only the dutiful. Two noble sons, Amphinomus and his brother, gallantly facing an equal task, when fire now roared in homes hard by, saw how their lame father and their mother had sunk down (alas!) in the weariness of age upon the threshold. Forbear, ye avaricious throng, to lift the spoils ye love! For them a mother and a father are the only wealth: this is the spoil they will snatch from the burning. They hasten to escape through the heart of the fire, which grants safe-conduct unasked. O sense of loving duty, greatest of all goods, justly deemed the surest salvation for man among the virtues! The flames held it shame to touch those duteous youths and retired wherever they turned their steps. Blessed is that day: guiltless is that land. Cruel burnings reign to right and left. Flames slant aside as Amphinomus rushes among them and with him his brother in triumph: both hold out safely under the burden which affection laid on them. There — round the couple — the greedy fire restrains itself. Unhurt they go free at last, taking with them their gods in safety. To them the lays of bards do homage: to them under an illustrious name has Ditis allotted a place apart. No mean destiny touches the sacred youths: their lot is a dwelling free from care, and the rightful rewards of the faithful.

Can you represent just one Catanaean brother? There are other coins of Catana that show just one brother and parent per side, but they are still both there…

What would the contemporary Roman have seen? Perhaps either narrative? I’m not willing to follow Evans wholeheartedly but some doubt seems warranted.

Postscript.

nec sanctos iuvenes attingunt sordida fata: /securae cessere domus et iura piorum.

The Loeb translation of the poem really doesn’t do justice to the last line and the thematic emphasis of the last word. PIUS.

227 out of 410 days: Confusing Omens, Confusing Cities

January 31, 2014 Liv Yarrow1 Comment

I used to think I was the only person who might mess up Lanuvium and Lavinium. NOT SO! Apparently Dionysius of Halicarnassus made the same mistake when he told this story:

While Lavinium was building, the following omens are said to have appeared to the Trojans. When a fire broke out spontaneously in the forest, a wolf, they say, brought some dry wood in his mouth and threw it upon the fire, and an eagle, flying thither, fanned the flame with the motion of his wings. But working in opposition to these, a fox, after wetting his tail in the river, endeavoured to beat out the flames; and now those that were kindling it would prevail, and now the fox that was trying to put it out. But at last the two former got the upper hand, and the other went away, unable to do anything further.5 Aeneas, on observing this, said that the colony would become illustrious and an object of wonder and would gain the greatest renown, but that as it increased it would be envied by its neighbours and prove grievous to them; nevertheless, it would overcome its adversaries, the good fortune that it had received from Heaven being more powerful than the envy of men that would oppose it. These very clear indications are said to have been given of what was to happen to the city; of which there are monuments now standing in the forum of the Lavinians, in the form of bronze images of the animals, which have been preserved for a very long time.

Why should we assume he’s wrong? Or at least that the attribution of this prophecy is disputed? Whelp. The obverse of the above coin looks like this:

That’s Juno Sospita, the patron goddess of Lanuvium! The moneyer’s family is well known for celebrating their connection to this city on their coins. If there was a statue that looked like the reverse, it probably stood in that forum, not at Lavinium. Add in this tantalizing bit of Horace:

Bk III: XXVII Europa

Let the wicked be led by omens of screeching

from owls, by pregnant dogs, or a grey-she wolf,

hurrying down from Lanuvian meadows,

or a fox with young:

And we can be pretty sure that Lanuvium that claimed the she-wolf and by extension the eagle as prodigies of its foundation.

It’s also a nice example of the wolf as a non-Roman, but still Latin, symbol, one that is morphed into a proto-Roman symbol through its alignment to the Aeneas narrative.

Pity its too late for the book. Thank goodness for this blog as a thought dumping space.

[Refs found at Crawford 1974: 482]