RRC 426/1 – Liv Mariah Yarrow

Sulla himself emphasized his title of “Imperator”, or later on a smaller issue “Dictator”, on the coins made in his life time in his name. Neither role appears on the remarkably numerous posthumous commemorations he receives on the coins. Q. Pompeius Rufus is celebrating his maternal and and paternal grandfathers, the consuls of 88 BC. And it is the shared consulship itself that receives emphasis. The two are treated as equals.

Yet, his paternal grandfather of the same name was murdered as consul, allegedly by Pompieus Strabo, Pompey the Great’s father, when he went to take over Strabo’s army as his duly assigned province of Italy. That sort of murder surely created some tension between their descendants. The two headed type was produced by far fewer dies than the curule chairs (according to Crawford — I’ll want to check the accuracy of this). The later gives even more emphasis to the legal office and authority of each ancestor, along with indications of their priesthoods. It tries to invoke Sulla and Rufus as exempla of law and order.

Sulla’s son, Faustus, takes a very different approach:

He refers to his father only as FE(E)LIX, the remarkable agnomen, adopted upon his Civil War victories in 82 BC, meaning something like ‘Blessed’, not dissimilar from the meaning Faustus’ own name. The imagery of one type harkens back to Sulla’s first success, the surrender of Jugurtha, while just Marius’ quaestor, an image that served as his father’s seal and the famous Bocchus monument. The rest recalls his divine patronage, an issue we’ve talked about before. He may also be trying to emphasize a close relationship between Pompey, his close ally, and his father.

This type shows Venus Victrix to whom Pompey dedicated the very next year his huge theatre complex and an image of Pompey’s seal ring, but of course it was a seal ring very close to Faustus’ father’s and Venus played a prominent role in his father’s life as well.

[I’m going to skip talking about RRC 480/1 as you can read about it in my earlier post to which I put a link above, even though it properly fits into this topic. I’m also skipping over the Sulla-Hercules connection as all I’d be doing at this point is parroting Crawford.]

Hölscher in 1980 proposed that this monument was the base of the Bocchus Monument, so well known from literary descriptions (Plutarch, Marius 32, Sulla 6). The best discussion of the literary sources is Mackay. If this is true the statues on the top of this base would look something like this:

This coin was struck by Sulla’s son, Faustus and probably copied his father’s seal ring (cf. Marius 10, Sulla 3). So far so good by way of background. It has been suggested that the base is not the original base BUT was restored after Sulla’s return. The logic being that Marius would not have let such an offensive monument remain standing when he controlled the city. The two trophies of the relief are seen as representations of the Sullan trophies of Chaeronea (again see Mackay, link above), just like on this coin:

[There is also a regular denarius with the same design, but I am showing the aureus because it’s prettier.] This image is also associated with a Sullan seal ring by Crawford based on Dio 43.18.3 and the iconography is also seen on the Athenian New Style Tetradrachms (BM specimen):

Already Crawford brought in the Sant’Omobono relief into the discussion, with reference to the other block:

He sees an analogy between the two wreaths hanging out from the palm branch and the two trophies. I’m interested in same detail but because of how it echoes the iconographic strategy of a later coin type (Pompeian?).

Notice how the four wreaths hang from the palm branch to presumably symbolize multiple victories. And, NOW, as I type this and check my RRC entry for 436/1, I see that Crawford saw the exact same connection…. [Insert footsteps-of-giants sentiment here.]

Not everyone thinks the Sant’Omobono Reliefs are the Bocchus Monument. Detractors include: Hafner German. – Zu den vermeintlich sullanischen Waffenreliefs von S. Omobono. Rivista di archeologia 1989 XIII : 46-54 and Alexander Thein’s unpublished dissertation on Sulla of 2002. Another dissenting opinion is Reusser, C. 1993, Der Fidestempel auf dem Kapitol in Rom und seine Ausstattung: ein Beitrag zu den Ausgrabungen an der Via delMare und um das Kapitol 1926–1943, Rome, p. 121-37.

Santangelo gives a concise up-to-date survey of the literature and its conclusions (p. 2-3, n. 7), but also see his later discussion at p. 206.

Minor reference updates 27 August 2013 & 16 June 2014

2/15/2016 addition:

Flower, Art of Forgetting, p. 113:

Tag: RRC 426/1

Memories of Sulla

Bocchus Monument, Sulla’s Monuments