Interesting Deultum of Gordian

[slokind]

After consulting with Gordian Guy, who started this thread and owns the subject coin, we are posting for everyone's consideration a vase in the Krannert Museum of the Univ. of Illionois, Champaign, by a hand called the Syracuse Painter.  The image came from an exhibition catalogue of the 1980s, edited by Warren Moon (not the quarterback, though), and I think I can get to a copy of that tomorrow.  For this evening, here is the on-line image:
  Here is a vase in the Krannert Museum of the Univ. of Illinois at
  Champaign, by the Syracuse Painter and datable shortly before 450
  BC. Here Herakles is making off, but the Hesperide that remains by
  the tree grasps its twig and 'relates' to it. I am beginning to
  think that it IS a Hesperide!  After all, consider the other unusual
  subjects that appear at Deultum and at Hadrianopolis and even at
  Mesembria--among all the other somewhat humdrum subjects.
What is so remarkable, in view of the flabbergasting persistence of motifs in ancient art, is that the Hesperide on this vase grasps the new-growth twig at the top of the tree and she and the snake seem, somehow, to reassure each other, just as on the coin of Deultum.  So I'll try to get a detail of that girl and the tree and the snake.
Pat L. (with permission C Rhodes).

[gordian_guy]

When slokind sent me the image of the vase prior to posting it, I was stunned by the depiction, the Hesperide grasping the top of the tree! It is difficult not to agree that this has to be a depiction of the Hesperide. I wonder, how one might contact Jurakova, as she was the author of the Treatise on the coinage of Deultum. I have not yet seen the RPC that covers the coinage of Gordian (I do not even know if it is complete or even started) and I wonder if the interpretation has been updated.

c.rhodes

[Tom Mullally]

Thank you, Pat, for this wonderful information.  I have to agree that Charlie's coin depicts the Hesperide, and am going to make that change in my copy of SNG Bulgaria, Deultum.

I don't know how to contact Jurakova, so I'd recommend you contact Michel Amandry.  He seems to be involved in all of the RPC development.  His email address is:

michel.amandry@bnf.fr

Be sure to include this thread in your email!

Tom

[slokind]

Eureka!  Found the Midwestern Collections catalogue in with the CVA fascicules.  Got the detail.  Yes, I think the Lady on the Deultum coin is The Hesperid Who Stayed, while her sisters pursued Herakles or else fled (as also on Antoninus Pius's medallion).  That hissing Snake has lost his Apples!  I have posted the detail image above, with the image of the whole hydria.  Pat Lawrence

Yes, I'll write to Michel Amandry and give him the link to this whole thread.
I can't say it's watertight proof, but our Lady just doesn't read like an Hygieia.  The hydria in Champaign at the Krannert Museum is datable, I think, not later than c. 450 BCE.

P.S. I had wondered why 'new growth' was shown coming from the top of the tree.  But the U. Illinois vase also may explain that: it is the bare branch that Herakles has just stripped. 

[slokind]

While hunting for something else, I found Herakles in the Garden of the Hesperides on two other Provincials.  They are illustrated in Kenneth Harl's Civic Coins and Civic Politics (Berkeley, 1987), pl. 32, 10 and 32, 11, and the latter includes two Hesperids.  Both are a long way from Deultum: pl. 32, 10 is from Alinda in Caria, for Septimius, and is SNG von Aulock 8053; pl. 32, 11 is from Temenothyrae in Phrygia, for Valerian I, and is BMC Phrygia 415, no. 33, pl .xlviii, 5.  I'll see whether either Harl or the BMC says anything that needs to be added here.
Michel Amandry probably noticed these already, but Valerian's Hesperid is not hugging her tree.
Pat Lawrence
Harl refers to the Temenothyrae-Flaviopolis coin in a note, and B. V. Head, BMC, p. ciii, remarks, "There is also another pictorial type (Pl. xlviii, 5) showing Herakles in the garden of the Hesperides before the serpent-entwined tree, behind which stand the three Hesperides in suppliant attitudes;..."  Head characteristically distinguishes between the pictorial and the statuary or properly numismatic character of the depiction, but neither of them mentions the Antoninus Pius illustrated by Cohen (see above).  PL

[Jochen]

Fascinating!

[Bacchus]

Sorry for going slightly off topic but who is No.4 in the plate illustrated?
Many thanks
Malcolm

[slokind]

BMC Phrygia, p. 414, no. 32, pl. xlviii, 4, is for Philip, Jr.  It shows "Hephaistos, naked, seated r. on cippus, forging with hammer and tongs a round shield placed on an anvil before him."  Also, pp. ci-ciii, One of the magistrates "under the Philips, and another under Valerian and Gallienus, was also an Archiereus."  So the reverse legend is Neikomachos archie(reus) Têmenothyreusi (end in the exergue).  I posted the whole plate not only because I could bring it within the KB limit but because the pictorial character of fig. 3 as well as fig. 5 is interesting.
On p. 38 of the last thesis I shall be privileged to direct, which was just today posted as .pdf, you can find the passage from Quintus of Smyrna, just as late as the Valerian coin, that F. Chamoux adduced in identifying the Youth from Antikythera as a beardless young Herakles in the Garden of the Hesperides.  To him and to the author of the thesis, Elisabeth Myers, we really owe our identification of the Hesperid on the Deultum coin.  Quintus purports to be describing a shield; it is one of those rhetorical exercises.  It is plain that the pictorial composition that we find on the coins was current and widespread throughout the Empire.
http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04012006-020209/unrestricted/Elisabeth_Myers_Thesis.pdf
Pat L.

[Bacchus]

Thank you.  Yes, a very interesting reverse type.  I thought it may be Phillip II but couldn't quite make out the legend. Thanks again
Malcolm

[Jochen]

Hi!

An old thread but a new coin dealing with this theme (sorry, not from Deultum!):

Cilicia, Tarsos, Gordian III, AD 238-244
AE 35
obv. AVT KAI M ANT GOR[DIANOC CEB]
       Bust, draped and cuirassed, seen from behind, radiate, r.
       in field l. and r. P - P
rev. TARCOV MHTROPOLEW
      Herakles, bearded(?), nude, stg. facing, head l., resting with r. hand on his club, holding
      over l. arm the lion-skin and in the outstretched l. hand five apples.; l. beside him a tree
      with twigs, entwined by a nake.
      in the upper r. field A / G, in the lower l. field M / K
Ref.: cf. SNG Copenhagen 383
very rare, good F/about VF, trace of ancient smoothing process on rev.

The coin is in the usual rough state of the coins of Tarsos.

I have added an article about the Garden of the Hesperides to the mytholgical thread. Now I see I have the same pic used which Pat has shown in the previous post!

Best regards

[slokind]

You mean the one by the Meidias Painter?  I think I got that from the CDs I have for the Art & Archaeology part of 'Perseus'; for academic use, and for such a famous vase, I don't think either Perseus or the BM will mind that either of us used it.  As for a Gordian of Tarsus, that is something that Gordian Guy may have; certainly I haven't, any more than the one from Temenothyrae in Phrygia.  Yours is a wonderful addition, and thank you for linking to our threads!
Pat L.

[moonmoth]

Here's a Caracalla from Deultum with a similar Athena reverse to that posted by gordian_guy back at reply #8.  Both Athenas holding the top of the tree, so it does not seem that that in itself is suggestive of a particular figure.

[gordian_guy]

I do indeed have a couple of examples of Herakles in the Garden of the Hesperides from Tarsus. My examples are from different dies than that of Jochens.

I also enclose a picture of an interesting Situla Vase from Southern Italy - Apulian - by the Ascoli-Satriano painter depicting Herakles and a Hesperid.

c.rhodes

[Jochen]

The Apulian vase is a nice addition to the theme!

Thanks for sharing it

[gordian_guy]

Thank you Jochen. I have grown quite fond of the pottery from Southern Italy. So far the Darius Painter is my favorite and the Ascoli-Satriano painter was associated with the Darius Painter.

c.rhodes

[slokind]

Having bought and paid for Draganov's book on Deultum, I can report that on questions of subject matter, apart from following Amandry's discussion of the fountain type, he discusses nothing.  He religiously follows Jurukova and her predecessors, thus avoiding any risk of saying anything for himself that might not be 'korrekt'.  If he did see anything odd about the coin that heads this thread, he didn't say so; he just cited Jurukova all over again.  Similarly with Mors/Thanatos (even the jolliest specimen).  He does sort out dies and produces some tables.
Of course, he needn't agree with others.  I was taught, though, that if I thought something was wrong or puzzling, I should explain why and, if possible, find a better resolution.  At least, till I could, I shouldn't publish in hard copy, a practice that extends the influence of failure to inquire.  Otherwise, I should continue inquiring or else explain why evidence was insufficient for resolution.
Pat L.
I only meant to say that Draganov evidently still did not notice that this reverse type, whatever you called the girl, certainly did not look like any Hygieia or Salus.  Why wasn't he curious?