Roman Republican Denarius # 39

Fantastic example! I really like the type and when I eventually get around to adding one to my collection, I hope it'll be as pleasing as yours.

If you haven't already come across it, @Liv Mariah Yarrow has put up online her excellent article from the RBW Festschrift that discusses this type.

 

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Magnifique monnaie @DonnaML !

I seem to be the only one on this forum not having the type in their collection...

Here's a Mercury :


Republic, Sextans - Rome, circa 211-206 BC
Head of Mercury right, wearing petasus, two pellets above helmet
ROMA, Prow of galley right, surmounted by a victory right
5.11 gr
Ref : RCV #1218

Q

 

Thank you for this article, Z.

 

Re-read your post. Thanks for the info, Donna.

MERCURY


RImp Octavian 32-31 BCE AR Den Rome mint Bare CAESAR DIVI F Mercury lyre RIC 257 Sear 1550


And, OF COURSE, I have to show a Dawg:


RR Lucius Caesius 112-111 BCE AR Den Apollo dog Lares Praestitesbust Vulcan tongs above LA RE S 175 Craw 298-1


BABY BLUE

 

You're not alone. I, too, can only congratulate @DonnaML on the beautiful addition and show a humble Mercury bronze:

Roman Republic, anonymous issue, AE semuncia (post-semilibral standard), 215–212 BC, Rome mint. Obv: head of Mercury r. Rev: prow r.; above, ROMA. 20mm, 6.97g. Ref: RRC 41/11.

 

abc123,

Many thanks for the Crawford quote!

His words still leave me in doubt whether the discovery was his, or he was taking it over from someone else. It must have been a fairly obvious conclusion once one noticed the C followed by a period and the TA in monogram form.

 

Nice coin and wow what a story Donna. I have never had any problems with DHL but it sounds like an incredibly nerve-racking 24 hours!

 

Crawford does not cite anyone else for the observation which leads me to believe it was his. Whether or not anyone else independently made the same observation but it was unknown to him I cannot say.

 

@abc123 and @curtislclay, this is very interesting, but it doesn't actually state that he made the discovery himself. But Curtis is right that seeing a control-letter consisting of TA in ligate form (I've never been sure whether that's any different from monogram form!) must have been a big clue to the nature of the code. I've never seen an example with that particular form of control-letter, by the way.

Also, Crawford disavowed the last part of the quoted statement in his book, published eight years after the article. See Crawford p. 377: "I no longer wish to contend that the survival-rate for this issue is abnormally low."

 

It was! I was convinced that the coin was gone forever. Of course I was aware that I could always buy a different one, but I wanted that one. And who knows how long it would have taken for me to find a similarly nice example at a similarly reasonable price?

 

I'm not a dog person myself -- I'm the sort of person who needs a low-maintenance pet like my cat Ziggy, especially living in Manhattan! -- but I love other people's dogs, and love seeing photos of them. So it's always good to see your pictures of Blue.

 

Thanks for pointing out that article. I read it and found if convincing. It is extremely detailed and scholarly and if some of you are interested but don't want to wade through it all, I suggest you go to the end of the main text, just above the first appendix, and read the last paragraph of page 350 (which is not clearly labeled or distinguished as the "Conclusion"). The argument requires knowing that Odysseus is, in some myths (discussed earlier in the article), an ancestor of the founders of Rome and other cities in Italy, so Fides, a major feature of dogs and the dog of Odyssseus in particular, might help bind Italy together in the turbulent times c. 82 BC when the coin was issued.

 

Great example! As a dog-person (and a classicist) I have always had a soft-spot for the type.

 

I read it too and found it quite interesting, although I skimmed a lot of the more dense passages and footnotes! Yours is a good summary. I thought the early parallels to the Ulysses/Argo iconography in gems and seals were fascinating. I had no idea that in some myths Ulysses was considered an ancestor of the founders of Rome itself, rather than merely the father of the mythical founder of Tusculum in Latium. I wonder why Virgil decided to portray him negatively in the Aeneid, especially as compared to Aeneas. I'm sure that has something to do with the apparently complete absence of such iconography in Imperial times (at least on coins), although I know that educated people did continue to study Homer, including the Odyssey.

 

Dang, @DonnaML, if I had the BM example of the RR issue beat by that much, I'd be taking the rest of the day off.