Lest I seem to be off on a tangent, or worse:
(1) a
Deultum coin with a puzzling
reverse; though
Hygieia may be one of the less indefensible names for the graceful female in light drapery, it is not without real problems,
(2) a kindred coin, also with a significant-looking
snake on a tree trunk, is posted, and
Gordian Guy also posts
his own photo of it; it is a young
Apollo with one
arm akimbo and the hand tucked behind the back, the other hand holding a laurel twig, and with drapery over one thigh,
(3) I post some images of the
type of females traditionally dressed like the
Deultum one, which do show that
Hygieia may be dressed that way,
(4) I link to
Doug Smith and thereby prompt
Gordian Guy to post
his own specimen of the
Hadrianopolis reverse showing an also unnamed but analogous
Apollo, but in 3/4 back view; this one does NOT have
his chlamys on
his thigh, and
his tree does NOT have a
snake, but the attitude, proportions, and posture are similar to the
Deultum Apollo coin posted as kindred in feeling to the
Deultum lady coin, possibly
Hygeia. The Apollo-and-Tree coins of
Deultum and
Hadrianopolis both have the character of pictorial reliefs.
(5) Here I'd like to post a print-out of the
Deultum lady coin, with color added to the tree and the
snake. The
snake, orange, is rendered large and curving, and its
head reaches forward to the lady's
face. For all that Hygieia's
snake is both mantic and iatric, intrinsic to her, I cannot think of a coin or other image of her where the
snake behaves that way; there is no
snake story to make it
act that way. Then a graduate student, whose thesis in progress brought her to read an article by François Chamoux with illustrations of
Herakles in the Garden of the
Hesperides, plucking the Apples, reminded me that there is one more
snake tree, that one. The
Deultum coin, just possibly (it would be unique, I think), represents one of the
Hesperides that guarded that snake-entwined tree. Far fetched? Perhaps so. But Hygieia's
snake is not a tree
snake, and the ancients would not 'read' a tree
snake as hers. Hers is draped across her arms or hangs across her shoulders and wraps around her body. The
snake of
Asklepios, on
votive reliefs where they appear together, stays right by
his throne or
his legs; it doesn't come say hello to her!
(6) This is not posted as an answer. But you see (or do you think otherwise?) that the
Deultum coin should not go into
LIMC as an example of
Hygieia?
Pat LawrenceI just received the references: "...the article by Francois Chamoux is "L'Herakles d'Anticythere," Revue Archeologique, 1968, pp.161-170... Chamoux says the coin
comes from the Cabinet
des Medailles and cites R.
Brauer, Zeitschrift fur Numismatik, 28, 1910, p.90 sq and H.
Cohen, Descr. hist.
des monnaies. Also the relief is 1st century A.D."