Bacchus – Liv Mariah Yarrow

200 out of 410 days: The Personification of Drunkenness

January 4, 2014 Liv YarrowLeave a comment

This little silenos figure on a lid of cista no. 45 in the Pierpont Morgan Library collection is labelled EBRIOS. Ebrius is the Latin adjective meaning ‘drunk’. Think English inebriation. Not an inappropriate name for a dionysiac character. I wonder if there is any relation to the river name where Ovid says the Bacchic throng discovered honey (Fasti, book 3):

liba deo fiunt, sucis quia dulcibus idem               735
     gaudet, et a Baccho mella reperta ferunt.
ibat harenoso satyris comitatus ab Hebro
     (non habet ingratos fabula nostra iocos);
iamque erat ad Rhodopen Pangaeaque florida ventum:
     aeriferae comitum concrepuere manus.               740
ecce novae coeunt volucres tinnitibus actae,
     quosque movent sonitus aera, sequuntur apes;
colligit errantes et in arbore claudit inani
     Liber, et inventi praemia mellis habet.

192 out of 410 days: Oscan in Asia Minor?

December 27, 2013July 20, 2018 Liv Yarrow1 Comment

This coin is only known from one unique specimen in Paris. {Irritatingly the digital catalogue entry has the wrong image linked to it as of 7/20/18} Its authenticity seems guaranteed by the accuracy of the Oscan language inscription, which at the time of its first documentation was not yet fully understood. Photos on the internet are hard to find. The wikipedia entry is okay. Heck, I’m impressed it has an entry or sub-entry. I’ve taken the image above from Wyler’s 2008 article.

Mostly I’m writing this post to make a note of Mattingly’s rather under-acknowledged theory that this is not a Social War coin at all, but a product of the Mithridatic Wars (2004: 189-192). The usual explanation is that the Italians copied the type from the bronze of Amisos:

And that thus it represents tangible proof of the suggestions in the literature that the Italians sought (and perhaps obtained?) support from Mithridates (Diod. 37.2.10; Athenaeus 5.213C). My enemy’s enemy is my friend, as they say. On Dionysus imagery during the Social War, see:

Pobjoy, M., ‘The First Italia’ in K. Lomas and E. Herring (eds.), The Emergence of State Identities in Italy in the First Millennium BC (London: Accordia Research Institute, 2000), 187-211.

Anyway, Mattingly focuses on this passage from Plutarch’s Lucullus:

Mithridates was now resolved upon the speediest possible flight, but with a view to drawing Lucullus away, and holding him back from pursuit, he dispatched his admiral, Aristonicus, to the Grecian sea. Aristonicus was just on the point of sailing when he was betrayed into the hands of Lucullus, together with ten thousand pieces of gold which he was carrying for the corruption of some portion of the Roman army.

He thinks that the Parisian specimen is one of these pieces of gold and that the Oscan was used to unsettle the Italian troops in Lucullus’ army and encourage them all the more to revolt.

This seems even more far fetched, than the Social War explanation. Really the problem comes down to there only being one of these gold coins. We have no comparative evidence or geographical data, let alone archaeological context. We remain in the realm of speculation. Anyway, just to make this post a little more complete, we should note that a similar bust of Dionysus does appear on the Italian’s silver coinage:

190 out of 410 days: Silenus, Pan, and Dionysus (Father Liber)

December 25, 2013September 21, 2018 Liv YarrowLeave a comment

There seems to me to be some logical inconsistency in how we identify Pan and Silenus on Roman Republican coins. The type above is likely the first to depict either. Crawford dates it to 91; Mattingly prefers 90 (2004: 248). Quite logically the “Silenus” on the obverse is taken to pun on the moneyer’s name, D. Silanus. The following year (according to both Crawford and Mattingly), C. Vibius Pansa strikes a coin that looks like this:

These coins might almost be called vanity pieces. There were probably less than 10 dies created for the manufacture for these types, but his other coins with Apollo and Minerva in a Quadriga (RRC 342/4-5) used upwards of a 1000 dies. Crawford assumes another name pun and identifies the head with pointy ears as Pan and the head with the ivy wreath as Silenus and sees them both as masks. Notice the heads have no necks. I find this problematic as Silanus’ Silenus and Pansa’s Pan have nearly identical iconography. If we look beyond the coins to for comparative iconography it become clear that Pan and Silenus have a pretty distinctive iconography. Pans are part goat and usually have more animalistic bodies, especially their lower halves. Their heads are marked out by two goat horns rising from their forehead. Silenoi or Papasilenus is an old satyr, pug-nosed, covered in a white flocked suit on stage, and horse ears like any satyr. [Note: the ears are pretty much the only difference between a Silenus depiction and that of Socrates.] Here is a perfect side by side:

Of course, rigid rules need not apply. Perhaps the same image can represent both Silenus and Pan. Compare for instance these coins of Panticapaeum:

The head on the coins of this city is often identified in catalogs as Silenus but because of the name of the community a visual pun is often assumed.

I am less convinced that a case can be made for the ivy crowded figure to be a Silenus. The face is just too smooth, the nose to straight. This seems very much like a head of Dionysus. The hair style is the same as that found on the Thasian type used by the Romans in Macedonia:

Compare the hair roll over the forehead, the loop down in front of the ears, and the prominent back knot. The two locks of hair hanging down have been slightly modified on the Roman type. The front is left curly the back has been modified into a straight fillet, perhaps to emphasize the mask like qualities. Notice that the two bunches of ivy berries at the top of the head and the ivy leaves below. The typical five on the Thracian type have become just three but with lobes and berries.

Pansa’s silver types was echoed on a few of the bronzes of his fellow moneyer Q. Titius:

Q. Titius depicts a beardless Liber on his denarii with a very similar hair style:

These are the first representations of Liber (Roman Dionysus) on the silver coinage. His first appearance at all was on an especially created denomination of the silver the bes or 2/3s coin = 8 unciae.

Even on this rare worn specimen the hair style can be made out.

The adoptive son of the Pansa just mentioned echoed elements of his father’s series in 48 BC (RRC 449).

I’ve put up this small selection just to note the later rendering of Dionysus and the Pan/Silenus mask. On the series of 90/89BC (RRC 342), Ceres had been paired with Apollo who is now missing from the later series, replace with a youthful Dionysus.

Update 3 January 2014: Just another nice juxtaposition of Silenus (central figure; note: beard and balding forehead and hair suit) and Pan (right figure, note: two horns from top of his head)

Mirror with symposion scene; Baltimore, The Walters Art Gallery; Etruskische Spiegel V, Taf. 43. Discussed in T. P. Wiseman. ‘The God of the Lupercal’, JRS 85 (1995) 1-22, at 9-10 (with plates 1-111) and ‘Liber; Myth, Drama and Ideology in Republican Rome’ in The Roman Middle Republic (2000) 265-299. Wiseman identifies Marsyas as a type of silenos. Here we see him dancing being imitated by a little pan, labelled Painiscos, or ‘Paniskos’.

Also note regarding the name pun on Silanus’s coin the first illustated above, inWiseman 2000: 270 with fig. 6 & 7 that younger satyrs with no beard or a short beard are labeled SILANOS and SILANVS.