Featured Boars, sows, and pigs of the Roman Republic and Empire

@Bing ... this coin is too cool... what is the attribute? Is it Eastern?

 

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Which coin are you referring? If it's the last , the attribution is:
TRAJAN
AE Quadran
OBVERSE: IMP CAES TRAIAN AVG GERM, diademed bust of Hercules right with lion-skin on neck
REVERSE: Boar walking right, SC in ex.
Struck at Rome, 98-117 AD
2g, 14mm
RIC 702

 

No boars in the collection - how boring!

 

Oh, wow, the picture did not stick in my last post: this one.

 

I can't believe I'm about to post something that is neither Parthian nor Elymaean. These are indeed strange times.

Well, I can't go the whole hog where this thread is concerned. Just the hindquarters. Hard to see through the soot covering the discus, but it's a boar (or a roasted pig, as the case may be):

 

Crawford 121/2, c. 200-195 BC:



Phil Davis

 

I really chuckled with your comment, and am flattered. At one time, my goal was to get as many RR coins that I could. I have a few hundred, but I seemed to have gotten sidetracked on so many OTHER cool niches.

- Etruria
- Carthage Empire
- Mercenary War
- Marsic Confederation
- Diadochi
- Makedonwn Kings
- ad nauseum....
Soooo many coins, so little time...

Kinda like Burgess Meredith in Twilght Zone... "Time Enough At Last"

 

Ooh, lovely!

ATB,
Aidan.

 

Ah, that one:
NORTHEAST GAUL, REMI
AE Potin Unit
OBVERSE: Figure seated facing with legs crossed holding torque and plait of hair
REVERSE: Boar standing right with snake-like ornament above, star below
Struck at unknown Mint, 100-50 BC
21mm, 6.12g
D&T220 // Depeyrot NC VII, 33 // BMC447-9 // DeLaTour8145
ex. Ken Dorney

 

I have a question about what's happening on the reverse of my Sulpicius Galba coin:



Do you think the soldier on the left is actually spearing the sow in the back (and is that supposed to be a hole in her back near the spear?) -- that would explain why she looks so angry! -- or is his spear simply resting on the ground behind her, and she's just generally disgruntled? I don't think the legend of the Great White Sow included killing her immediately after finding her, but who knows? Whatever's going on, the soldier on the right seems greatly entertained: because of the overstrike, one can see only his outline, like he's in some kind of minimalist cartoon, but he certainly appears to be laughing -- or exclaiming joyfully -- as he points at the sow.

 

I have it cataloged as: Two soldiers swearing oath over a sow

 

I don't actually think that's what they're doing. That's more the standard "soldiers swearing oath over pig" story, like on the Ti. Veturius coin I posted. This coin depicts a different story, as explained in my original description.

 

It could be different, but when I look up Sulpicius Galba examples on both Wildwinds and acsearch, about all I find indicate soldiers swearing oath.

 

Aeneas killed the Sow and all 30 piglets. Yummy supper THAT nite!

Here is a quote from Cliff's Notes on Virgil's Aenead:

So in the detail you cut out... is that the sacrificial pyre, ready to be lit? Or is that a bad representation of the 30 piglets? Or both. The pig does look like she has heavy teats of a sow with recent piglets.

"One night while Aeneas is sleeping, the god of the Tiber River appears in a dream and tells the Trojan prince that he will find on the shore a white sow and her litter, which symbolically represent Alba Longa, to be founded by Ascanius after thirty years have passed — the number of sucklings in the litter. This discovery is the sign Helenus foretold to Aeneas: It is absolute proof that the Trojans have come to the right place at last. The river god also advises Aeneas to sail upstream to the city of Pallanteum and seek the aid of its king, Evander.

Waking, Aeneas prays to the river god and then finds the sow and her litter, all of which he sacrifices to Juno. He then sails up the Tiber with two of his oared ships and their crews."

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/a/aeneid/summary-and-analysis/book-viii

Normal Sow's litter approx 8-15 piglets. So, 30 is a real story...

 

@Alegandron and @Bing, this is definitely a different story from the standard oath-taking scene as depicted on the Ti. Veturius coin. RSC and BMCRR describe the reverse of the Sulpicius Galba coin as just another oath-taking scene, but Crawford and RCV disagree. See Sear RCV I at p. 108: “Crawford’s interpretation of this interesting type seems the most convincing: it refers to Aeneas’ [landing at and founding of] Lavinium (home of the Sulpicia gens) with the Penates, and the subsequent miracle of the great white sow [giving birth to 30 piglets], which foretold the founding of Alba Longa, where the soil was more fertile, 30 years later." See also this recounting of the story, in discussing the Sulpicius Galba coin, giving a version differing slightly from @Alegandron's quotation from the Cliff Notes on the Aeneid:

https://www.forumancientcoins.com/historia/coins/r1/r02310.htm

The Dei Panates and the large sow

When Aeneas fled from Troy, Helenus, a son of Priam, predicted that Aeneas would build a new city at a place where a white sow would give birth to 30 piglets. When Aeneas and his Trojans arrived at the coast of Latium after a long voyage from Carthage, they were hungry and so landed on the beach to eat. Aeneas prepared to sacrifice a pregnant white sow that he had brought in his ship for this purpose, but the sow escaped and fled inland, laying down under an oak-tree (or ilex-tree) and giving birth to 30 white piglets. Because of the prophecy Aeneas knew that he should built a city here. He sacrificed the 30 piglets and erected a shrine at this place. The new city he called Lavinium referring to Lavinia, daughter of king Latinus.

However King Latinus had given his daughter Lavinia to Aeneas when she was already engaged to Thurnius the king of the Rutuli. Thurnius began a war against the Latini and the Trojans in which both he and Latinus were killed. So Aeneas became king in Latium. In the continuing wars Aeneas was also killed, his body taken away by a river. Ascanius succeeded him as king. He was able to defeat his rivals and the Latini now became stronger and more powerful. They built a new city, called Alba Longa. The name Alba Longa is said to be derived from the white sow (it actually means "long white"). On the Forum of Lavinium stood a bronze statue of the sow.

The Penates (latin "dii penates") were gods of the house and especially the hearth. They were responsible for the supply of food and drinks. When Aeneas escaped from Troy he took the Penates with him from Troy to Lavinium.

Lavinium was the home of the Sulpicia gens, so hence the allusions to the great white sow and the Penates.

But whether only the piglets were sacrificed or the sow as well, and whether or not the sow came on Aeneas's ship and escaped from the beach before being found -- I don't plan to dig out my copy of the Aeneid to check! -- do you think the soldier on the left is spearing her right there on the coin? (I agree that she looks like she recently gave birth, but I think those are supposed to be her teats, not the piglets themselves.)

 

Ummm, Donna, I was using the Cliff's Notes to illustrate exactly as you are stating: it was NOT the Oath Scene, rather that it is Aeneas landing and dreaming about / finding the White Sow and 30 piglets.

I DO understand the Veturius Oath Ceremony. I even feel that it went further in the Marsic Confederation Denarius with the 8 Marsic Tribes binding themselves into the Confederation against Rome:

Now, you need to go get one of these:


Marsic Confederation / Italian Allies
Social War 90-88 BCE
AR Denarius
19x17.9mm, 3.7g
Anonymous Issue, Corfinium Mint
Obv: Italia head, l, ITALIA behind
Rev: Oath-taking scene with eight warriors, four on each side, pointing their swords towards a sacrificial pig, which is held by an attendant kneeling at the foot of a standard. - Binding the Marsi, Picentines, Paeligni, Marrucini, Vestini, Frentani, Samnites, and Hirpini Tribes into the Marsic Confederation against Rome during the Social War
Comment: The reverse is based on the gold Stater and Half-Stater from the Second Punic War, and the Ti Viturius denarius...
Sear 227 SYD 621 SCARCE

 

I realize that you understood -- I was agreeing with you! That's why I said the differences were slight between your version and the one I quoted. As to the main question of which story the reverse depicts, we're on the same page. None of the oath-taking coins depicts a gargantuan sow! So, no "Ummms" are necessary.

 

Also, my guess is that the soldier on the left is not spearing the sow in the scene we see, regardless of whether they sacrifice her later. I'm not sure the soldier on the right would be laughing in the middle of a religious sacrifice.

 

I prefer the white sow and piglets story too. The earliest reference I have is Admiral Smyth's 1856 catalogue of the Duke Of Northumberland's collection.
Smyth writes a lot of sense and says it's the white sow:


As mentioned above, Grueber refers to it as an Oath Scene in 1910, as does Sydenham in 1952, while in 1974 Crawford returns to the Sow Story.

I have one too



ATB,
Aidan.

 

That's a very impressive snout that your sow has! I find it equally impressive how quickly Admiral Smyth veers off-course from discussing this coin to condemning the evils of paganism.

It's interesting that Wildwinds and various sellers' descriptions continue to cite this coin as an example of an oath-taking scene, more than 45 years after Crawford, and 20 since Sear adopted Crawford's view in RCV I. I suspect that they're mostly just copying old descriptions, or relying on RSC.