Tag: Athena

286 out of 410 days: Cocks, Victory and Virility

Liv Yarrow1 Comment
Gem of glass paste imitating sard, engraved with a terminal figure of Hermes, before which stands a youth holding a wreath and palm-branch in his left hand, and a cock on his right.
Gem of glass paste imitating sard, engraved with a terminal figure of Hermes, before which stands a youth holding a wreath and palm-branch in his left hand, and a cock on his right. BM 1923,0401.420; Gem no. 2794

I was writing up my thoughts for the book on the symbolism of the cock on coinage during the First Punic War this morning.  [An issue touched upon in an earlier post, here.]  The idea that in the Greek world the cock need not be directly linked to Hermes, but more generally be a symbol of bellicosity and manliness, is well summarized by this book.

Image

Image

 

This might help explain the pairing of cock and Minerva (Athena) on coins of Suessa, Teanum, et al (for images see earlier post).  But I was still playing around with the Mercury association in my mind, when I came across the glass paste above.

Here we see the epitome of manhood, the victorious young athlete standing before a terminal Herm.  He has his prize crown and palm-frond and in thanksgiving for his victory he offers the god a cock. [Just like the victor in the Callimachus epigram quoted in the previous post!] The cock symbolizes at once his victory and his virility.  A Herm’s most notable feature was its phallus.  Although we are often think of Mercury (Hermes) as first the god of commerce, we must remember he ended up as such by his status as the fecund god, the wealth-bringer.   Just as cock is slang for male genitalia today, so in the ancient world the cock encapsulated a similar semantic range of meaning as the phallus: power, especially masculine power, the (pro)creative power that leads to wealth and to overcoming one’s adversaries.

Anyway, the glass paste is a ‘gem’ of a summation of the symbolism of the cock, so I thought I’d share. Okay, back to my other writing.

Post Script. 

When two cocks appears facing each other on gems it is most often a representation of a cock fight, thus a type of agonistic scene, often with victory imagery incorporated into the design:

Gem with two cocks and a palm branch. [Arachne image database]

Gem with two cocks one being crowned by victory.  [Arachne image database]

Gem with one cock on a rudder with a palm branch. [Arachne image database]

But also relevant are images where the are associated with martial symbolism:

Gem with military standards, cocks, and stars, flanking scorpion grasping a cresent.  [Arachne image database]

This is a good image showing the early association of the cock and Athena:

Vase in the Beazley Archive.

Other relevant bibliography:  Hoffmann 1974.

260 out of 410 days: Profile versus 3/4s Profile

Liv Yarrow4 Comments
Above: Detail from Athenian red-figure clay vase, about 475-425 BC. Paris Musée du Louvre G365 © Musée du Louvre [Image links to Beazley archive]

I’m not worrying about the image above, I just think it is a pretty picture and one that can help students enter the iconographic and narrative thought world in which man-faced bull coinage was stuck.  

I am worrying about the dating of RRC 2/1: Thurian-style Athena obverse, full man-faced bull, walking right in profile, star above.  An image of which can be found on Molinari’s website, here.  Scroll down to #355, clicking on it provides a better resolution.  There is only one known specimen.  I’ve talked about how problematic that can before, twice in fact it seems.

I was adding a note in my current chapter draft about HN Italy 753 being the prototype for the reverse of  this first ROMANO coin (so HN Italy says), and decided to have another scroll through Molinari’s collection of Neapolis man-faced bull images (MFB hereafter). The thing is that even though HN Italy 753 has an eight-rayed star above the MFB on some specimens, the MFB has a 3/4 profile head. A similar 3/4 profile head is found on all  the full-bodied MFBs on bronzes of Neapolis, as far as I can tell.  [Other images are available via Luigi Graziano’s project].

Whoever carved the dies for RRC 2/1 was more familiar with a MFB in profile, rather than in 3/4s profile.  That makes it seem rather unlikely to me that he was looking at a bronze of Neapolis, let alone was also someone engraving dies for the Neapolis mint.  

I suspect somewhere in Molinari’s great collection of images one could find a better possible parallel, say something like the Hyira silver coins.  Obviously no star and wrong placement of ethnic, but overall a better ‘model’.  Crawford sees a sea-horse/sea monster/pistrix or whatever you want to call it on Athena’s helmet.  That might be another point when comparison shopping.

Obviously dating based on iconographic models is problematic anyway.  We need a few good hoards.  But don’t we always.

***

Update 8/27/14:  My thinking on this has developed a bit. See this more recent post.

256 out of 410 days: Helmet Hair

Liv YarrowLeave a comment

So I was looking at the Neapolis coins that served as prototypes for the earliest coins in the name of Rome.  And, Apollo has a very flippy hairdo of a not terribly typical type.  Here’s another to prove I’m not making this up:

That flip was feeling familiar.  And not from just the Roman type (RRC 1/1):

Here’s a link to one more of these.  Anyway.  It struck me that that hair flip is visually quite related to the neck flap that appears on Roma’s helmet on certain early types like these:

Or to a lesser extent on these earlier bronzes (not to mention Rome’s first silver piece with bearded Mars and Horse’s Head probably also minted at Neapolis, modern Naples):

But that’s clearly not the direction of influence.  The culprit must be the pegasi of Corinth that became so common in S Italy at the end of the 4th century BC:

The interesting iconographic borrowing isn’t really the Roma helmets, but the Neapolis (and soon-to-be-Roman) Apollo who gets his flip and snaky tendrils by way of Athena’s Corinthian manifestation.

Update 4 March 2014:  Check out images of Roman types at Nick Molinari’s site, note especially the image of the RRC 2/1, known from only one specimen.

Contemplative War Goddesses

Liv YarrowLeave a comment

File:Acropole Musée Athéna pensante.JPG

One difference (besides the birds) between the Vespasian restoration and the Republican original discussed the other day  is certainly the posture of the goddess Roma herself.  On the imperial aurei she sits erect with a shorter scepter.  On the republican denarii she leans forward and the spear extends far over her shoulder.   She lets it take her weight.  Her arm which holds it rests on her thigh.  Her gaze is seems full occupied by scene before her.   She is at rest, almost a mournful pose, certainly a contemplative one.  In that, it strongly reminds me of the above Greek relief from Athens in the Acropolis Museum.

The gem, an imprint of which can be seen here: http://arachne.uni-koeln.de/item/marbilder/2688807, does not have the same contemplative pose.  Like on the aurei she sits upright holding her scepter instead of letting it hold her.   The birds are intermittent.  [A. Furtwängler, Beschreibung der geschnittenen Steine im Antiquarium, Königliche Museen Berlin (1896) Cat. no. 9561.]

There is also this gem [http://arachne.uni-koeln.de/item/marbilder/2688808] with Roma and wolf and twins plus tree and Victory, over all a very different composition.