Dear friends of ancient coins! We had already discussed this topic once more than 10 years ago without reaching a final result. That is why I would like to raise it again here. There are a number of provincial coins from Markianopolis and Nicopolis on which you can see a kind of indentations running down the side of the garment from the hip to the bottom. What is this about? So far I have found this indentations only on female clothing. It is not an isolated case. I have evidence from Markianopolis under Pontianus, Seleucus and Getulicus, and from Nicopolis under Agrippa and Longinus. Perhaps one or two others have examples from other mints? Is it a property of the clothing or just negligence on the part of the die cutter? Since I am convinced that there was little chance involved in the cutting of the die, it should rather be a property of the clothing. But which one? Any opinion on this is most welcome With thanks in advance Jochen
Interesting. I'm with you. It's intentional and part of her apparel. At first I was thinking it was some sort of flashy tassel. But with it coming from the waistline I wonder if it's a fancy rope to sintch her robe. Kinda like To help make sure something like this doesn't accidently happen:
I have no speculation to contribute, but this is really interesting, and I hope more answers are forthcoming this time around. I assume we're talking about the feature that looks rather like a "barber pole" (that might be an image limited to Americans born before a certain date), or like twisted/braided/feathered cord or fabric? At first I thought it might be some kind of lance at her side, but across those examples it does seem to be part of the apparel. However, it does always appear very straight/rigid compared to the rest of the flowing garments. This kind of reminds me of @dougsmit 's discussion of the stirrups on fallen horsemen (regardless of any revisions or qualifications to that theory, it's still interesting enough that I still return to it as an exemplar of how coin imagery may still be useful for illuminating the little details of life in antiquity). My questions would be, how common is this? I don't know this coinage well, but that looks like at least 2 or 3 different female figures across this nice little corpus (or sample). Does it appear on some figures more than others? Quickly checking ACSearch I noticed how elaborate the illustrations of female robes are, including others with interesting variants and perhaps a slightly different feature (or possibly the same feature depicted differently?). In the type below, there are two "levels" of robes (or a second "belt"? going around the knees/shins?), with more wavy lines in place of the feature you describe (to the left). Both are examples of Macrinus & Diadumenian vis-a-vis obverses, the reverses described by Roma / G&M as Homonia / Concordia (not my coins; ACSearch link & link 2) EDIT: Good theory. Another strategy would be to try to figure out if there are any contemporary sculptures one might compare them to. If one searches the BM or major collections online, there may be statues of women or goddesses with "Stola" or "Chyton" in the description.
