Numismatic metaphors in literature

[rjohara]

I posted a general question about this a long time ago, and I just came across another interesting example.

The general question: Does anyone know of any non-Classical literary or artistic references that use a numismatic coin-and-die metaphor for something? (I will assume that Melville-Jones's "Testimonia Numaria" has recorded most Greek and Roman references.) Modern, medieval, or ancient (but non-Greek/Roman) examples are welcome.

The one I had seen before was from the Hebrew Mishnah:

"For man stamps many coins with the one seal and they are all like one another; but the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed is he, has stamped every man with the seal of the first man, yet not one of them is like his fellow. Therefore every one must say, For my sake was the world created." (Sanhedrin 4.5. The translator here has used "seal" rather than "die"; I don't know what the Hebrew original was but if the word is "coin" then surely "die" would be better than "seal." Or perhaps "type" would fit also, referring to the design.)

The one I came across just recently, a very specific example that distinguishes the metal from the stamp given to it, is from Robert Burns's song "Is there for honest poverty":

The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that.

Any more examples that people can think of?

[basemetal]

I know, I know this is not exactly what you meant but I did find this which is an interesting word play:

“You Can Load a Die, But You Can’t Bias a Coin”

Andrew Gelman and Deborah Nolan (2002), The American Statistician, 56, 308-311.

[rjohara]

“You Can Load a Die, But You Can’t Bias a Coin”

Methinks they never saw an archaic coin with a lumpy flan. 

This raises an interesting tangential question though: when did "tossing a coin" become a method of making a random choice? Certainly not before about 500 BC. Various kinds of dice and knucklebones had been around for centuries, but there must have been a fairly distinct point at which "tossing a coin" became a clear practice. Do we owe this to the Greeks or the Romans?

Very interesting.

[*Alex]

Quote from rjohara
This raises an interesting tangential question though: when did "tossing a coin" become a method of making a random choice? Certainly not before about 500 BC. Various kinds of dice and knucklebones had been around for centuries, but there must have been a fairly distinct point at which "tossing a coin" became a clear practice. Do we owe this to the Greeks or the Romans?

The Romans used the expression "Capita aut nava" for "heads or tails", this stemming from the heads of Janus on the obverse, and the prow of a galley on the reverse, of the Republican As. The expression was still current in Imperial times.

Alex.

[Rhetor]

John Donne's "The Canonization" begins:

For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
    Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
    My five grey hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout,
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,
        Take you a course, get you a place,
        Observe his Honour, or his Grace,
Or the King's real, or his stamped face
    Contemplate, what you will, approve,
    So you will let me love.

The King's stamped face is certainly a numismatic reference.  Basically Donne says, "Go be a courtier or pursue money (the stamped face), just as long as you stay out of my love life."  Donne writes in the early 17th c.

[Rhetor]

Also, an entire book has been written on financial metaphors on medieval literature, entitled Dante, Chaucer, and the Currency of the Word: Money, Images, and Reference in Late Medieval Poetry by R. A. Shoaf.  I think the work is out of print, so Shoaf has graciously uploaded it on this site: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/rashoaf/currency/dccw.html


Rhetor

[Rhetor]

Coinage metaphors run throughout this text:  Alain of Lille [Alanus de lnsulis]: The Complaint of Nature. [ d. 1202.]

Coining as a metaphor for (homosexual?) sex:

“And many other youths, clothed by my [Nature's] favor with noble beauty, who have been crazed with love of coin, have turned their hammers of love to the office of anvils.”

God and Nature as mintworkers:

“But after the universal Maker had clothed all things with the forms for their natures, and had wedded them in marriage with portions suitable to them individually, then, wishing that by the round of mutual relation of birth and death there should to perishable things be given stability through instability, infinity through impermanence, eternity through transientness, and that a series of things should be continually woven together in unbroken reciprocation of birth, He decreed that similar things, stamped with the seal of clear confirmity, be brought from their like along the lawful path of sure descent. Me, then, He appointed a sort of deputy, a coiner for stamping the orders of things, for the purpose that I should form their figures on the proper anvils, and should not let the shape vary from the shape of the anvil, and that through my activity and skill the face of the copy should not be changed by additions of any other elements from the face of the original….Accordingly, obeying the command of the Ruler, in my work I stamp, so to speak, the various coins of things in the image of the original, exemplifying the figure of the example, harmoniously forming like from like, and have produced the distinctive appearances of individual things.”

Also, in his Miller’s Tale, Chaucer compares the sexy Alison to a “coin newly minted from the Tower” (of London).

Sorry for this barrage of references.  I’m a medieval lit professor and your question triggered a bunch of responses.  I’ll probably think of even more references later.

Rhetor

[mauseus]

Hi,

The one I particularly like is one relating to the wrethced sted of many Pescennius Niger denarii. It is Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872) in conversing with an entomologist:

"What a superb butterfly you have in the at case!-

- O yes, yes, well enough. These Lepidoptera are for children to play with. Give me the Coleoptera, and the king of the Coleoptera are the beetles!-

THe particular beetle he showed me was an odious black wretch that one would kick out of his path, if he did not serve him worse than that. But he looked at it as a coin collector would look at a Pescennius Niger.

- A beauty! he exclaimed - and the only specimen of the kind in this country, to the best of my belief. A unique, sir, and there is a pleasure in exclusive possesion."

Beauty, rarity and ugliness all combined - just look at many of Niger's extant denarii.

Regards,

Mauseus. 

[rjohara]

The Romans used the expression "Capita aut nava" for "heads or tails", this stemming from the heads of Janus on the obverse, and the prow of a galley on the reverse, of the Republican As. The expression was still current in Imperial times.

That's another good question: there must be cultural variants for "heads" and "tails" around the world, yes? Did the Athenians say "goddess or owl" as they tossed a tet into the air? 

[rjohara]

These are all terrific examples - keep them coming if you have more. As a naturalist, I especially like both of the recent ones from Rhetor and mauseus! Darwin began his career as a beetle collector, and has a comment in his autobiography about the passion for collecting, which turns a man into either a miser or a naturalist. (I confess I had to look up "Pescennius Niger" to discover that he was an emperor; change it to "Pescennius niger" and it sounds like a perfect scientific name for a beetle.)

Rhetor's example of God/nature striking animals from the same die is somewhat like the passage from the Mishnah at the beginning of this thread, and it's quite a sophisticated metaphor for the persistence and variability of biological species. There are authors from the pre-evolutionary period who talk about individuals of a species being formed from the same mold, but I haven't seen a coin-and-die version before - it seems like an obvious one.

[slokind]

Where is it--in one of the shorter epistles?--that character, in its literal Greek sense is used also approaching its modern sense?  Surely, it must be widespread in sermons and treatises, through and beyond the middle ages, for the Image of God and related concepts, being so graphic.  I'm afraid I don't have the right reference books here.  Pat Lawrence

[Jochen]

Hi!

I think it is some years before that I have already written this article on the Forum. Sadly it was deleted. So I will try again:

The word 'character' is derived from the greek terminus technicus 'charakter' which means the upper movable die in the strucking process. The lower one, the anvil, was fixed and called 'akmoniskos = small anvil'. The greek 'charakter' is derived from the verb 'charassein' meaning 'to point, to scribe; to mark, to strike'. The greek suffix '-ter', like the latin suffix '-tor', is meaning the doer or here the tool. Already in classic times the word 'charakter' was going over on the picture which was struck on the flan.

And already in classic times 'charakter' was used to describe the distinct (in German = 'ausgeprägt'!'), characteristic(!) shape of a letter or a face too.

The first one who used 'charakter' in our transferred sense was Theophrastos (died 322 BC), scholar of Aristoteles and teacher of the comedy writer Menander, the keen observer of human nature. Theophrastos has described about 30 different human weaknesses, striking and comically, and has called his compilation 'ethikoi charakteres'. From this time on 'character' means the characteristic, moral 'imprint' .

A similar development is found in the word 'type' too. The greek 'typos' is derived from the verb 'typtein' meaning 'to beat, to strike'. So 'typos' is the formative strike (German = 'Gepräge'!). Already in classic times the meaning of 'typos' was extended to the human types.

Source: Klaus Bartels, Wie Berenike auf die Vernissage kam - 77 Wortgeschichten, WBG 1996

Best regards

[slokind]

Yes, that is what I meant by 'its literal sense': the dictionary definition and explication.  You also can find it in LSJ and part of it in the OED.  See also the related words, such as the verb charassô.  I no longer have the theological and medieval resources that I once had, so I was inviting someone who has to find nice usages in authors such as, e.g., Anselm or the Victorines.  Alain de Lisle is just the sort of thing I was thinking of, but he certainly does not stand alone.  Pat L.
P.S. For Greek, isn't charaktêr the right word for a die engraver?  But I suppose that the evolved meanings of 'character' preclude its use.
But Theophrastos, I suspect, is the most influential author, especially for post-Reniassance times, because La Bruyere did it all over again, in his version of Theophrastos--not exactly, but practically, a translation, updated.
Still, beyond the metaphor in Theophrastos's title, what rjohara asked for is more, going further, as many of the examples already posted exhibit.

[basemetal]

The origins of the flipping of a coin still fascinate me. Like so many things we take for granted now, the original invention actually took some observation and creativity. 
Certianly the coin was chosen for random selection determination because of its ubitquinous quality.  So many people had them.
Coins often had a certain mystical or at least official quality about them. Dice certainly did not and could be manipulated. 
Also, size and density wern't  a factor in a coin.  Light and small ones worked as well as large and heavy ones.
And though I have no historical proof, I feel strongly that the flipping of a coin was usually followed by letting it fall to the ground.  I'm sure the flipping and then catching and slapping the coin on the back of the hand and saying "Call it!" is a modern construct that would not have set well with the ancient parties with a stake in the outcome.  Sorry for the tangent.

[Manzikert]

Hi

The only reference that springs to mind is another one from Shakespere, in King John (I,i,143):

    ..my face so thin,
    That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose,
    Lest men should say, "Look, where three-farthings goes!"

a reference to the extremely thin three farthings coin which had a rose behind the queens head to distinguish it from the penny and the halfpenny.

Best wishes

Alan