Coin from Pompeii that dates the eruption of Vesuvius?

[commodus]

RIC 19 is the capricorn type, but with the IMP XIIII acclamation. RIC 37 and 38 are the same type, but each ahs the IMP XV acclamation.

As far as the eruption goes, though, it really makes little difference as everyone who didn't escape early would have been killed within a few hours as the noxious gasses overtook them. The eruption is believed to have lasted four or five days. Even if someone had survived (though none could have) through the entire eruption, it would have only been a matter of a couple of days difference -- certainly not enough time for different coinage to have been in her purse. However, by the time the pyroclastic flow struck, anyone who hadn't been killed by the gasses already would have been vaporized by it.

[commodus]

That the coin is "barely readable", as stated in the article Commodus links to, I consider nonsense.

I concur. Actually, there's quite a bit that seems to be nonsense in that article, but I figured I'd post it anyway, in the interest of thoroughness.

[Minos]

There is a drawing of a coin but I'm not entirely sure it is of the one found or just a generic example of the same type (in any case, a high grade coin). My italian is not the best (i.e. inexistant) so as far as the rest goes, my interpretation of the article is as vague as my understanding of the language

[FlaviusDomitianus]

Grete Stefani is the Director of Boscoreale's Antiquarium.

The entire article is downloadable here: [BROKEN LINK REMOVED BY ADMIN]

Since I'm Italian, I've made a translation of the second part, with the little help of google.

"But now a small silver coin makes this matter clear. The denarius was found at Pompeii, in a reliable and documented context: it was part of a hoard of 180 silver coins, 40 gold coins, a ring and a gem, brought by a group of fugitives during their escape, found June 7, 1974 under the house of Gold Bracelet, Insula Occidentalis.

This coin, whose extraordinary historical significance has not yet shown, was minted by the Emperor Titus and bears on the obverse his portrait with the legend IMP AVG PM TITVS CAS Vespasian (ie "Emperor Titus Caesar Vespasian Augustus, Pontifex Maximus") and on the reverse a Capricorn on the globe and the rest of the imperial title: VIIII IMP TR P XV COS VII PP ("with the tribunician power for the ninth time, acclaimed emperor for the fifteenth time, consul for the seventh time, Father of the Nation").

So this is a coin of AD 79, as indicated by the reference to the seventh consulate of Titus, dated after July 1 for the reference to the ninth tribunician power he assumed  in July, but when Titus had already gained the fifteenth imperial acclamation (IMP XV ) which, according to Cassius Dio, he would have earned for achievements in Britain.
 
But when was given to Titus the title IMP XV?

The statement it 's by the emperor Titus himself. Two officiale epigraphic documents provide us with an interesting “terminus post quem” - a letter  addressed from the emperor to the administrators of the Spanish city of Munigia (Seville, Archaeological Museum) dated September 7, 79 AD and a bachelor's military discharge found in Egypt (British Museum) dated September 8, 79 AD –  in which Titus still has the XIV imperial acclamation; an unmistakable sign that it is only after these dates he received the XV.
 
Based on this evidence, the presence of a coin at Pompeii positively dated at least after September 8, 79 AD, confirms in a definitive way, the hypothesis that other evidence had already led to, and refutes the Pliny’s witness, or rather the officially accepted version of it. The eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum happened certainly in the fall, after September 8, most likely in late October, that is when harvest grape was over, maybe - assuming the date mentioned by Pliny the Younger in some of his manuscripts - October 24." (ie Domitian’s birthday, my note).

[Minos]

Not sure you can post this (private section backdoor (had a "login" box when trying to access upper levels) ?, copyrighted article ?), that's why I didn't

 

[Minos]

Maybe not afterall, just got through the front door and found the article without the need to login

[curtislclay]

The denarius of Titus in question is said to now be in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.

According to the drawing, the coin is in excellent condition and the reading IMP XV is clear. I wish it were an actual photo rather than a drawing, however!

[David Atherton]

I quite agree. With so much hinging on it you would think somewhere someone would have published a photo!

[commodus]

There MUST be one published somewhere. The coin was found in 1974, so 37 years ago. Surely in all that time it has been published. Then again, the coin has been known for 37 years yet the August 24th date for the eruption is still being widely cited as though there were no question of its accuracy when, in fact, there seems to be considerable evidence that the date is wrong -- this coin being perhaps the most compelling piece. It almost seems as if the coin, and information about it, has been intentionally supressed rather than seriously entertain the probability that the oft-cited date is incorrect!

[curtislclay]

Though the coins were found in 1974, it was apparently only Stefani in 2006 who got around to cataloguing them and realized the importance of the IMP XV piece.

So her article of 2006 is the first publication of the coin; why she couldn't publish a photograph of it rather than a mere drawing is not explained.

[commodus]

Ah, thanks for the clarification, Curtis; I had missed that important bit of information (that the coin was uncataloged until five years ago). Still, that is five years -- time enough to publish images.

[*Alex]

Here is an image capture of the coin drawing from the video.

Alex.

[Minos]

I've sent an email to the people responsible for the website where the G. Stefani article is hosted (Soprintendenza archeologica di Pompei) asking if they were aware of an existing scan/photograph of the actual coin. Will see...

[fluffy82]

I know wikipedia is not usually regarded as the most trustworthy source online, but they give a nice sum-up of the facts pointing towards a date in November for the eruption...

The eruption was documented by contemporary historians and is generally accepted as having started on 24 August 79, relying on one version of the text of Pliny's letter. However the archeological excavations of Pompeii suggest that the city was buried about two months later; This is supported by another version of the letter which gives the date of the eruption as November 23. People buried in the ash appear to be wearing warmer clothing than the light summer clothes that would be expected in August. The fresh fruit and vegetables in the shops are typical of October, and conversely the summer fruit that would have been typical of August was already being sold in dried, or conserved form. Wine fermenting jars had been sealed over, and this would have happened around the end of October. The coins found in the purse of a woman buried in the ash include one which includes a fifteenth imperatorial acclamation among the emperor's titles. This cannot have been minted before the second week of September. So far there is no definitive theory as to why there should be such an apparent discrepancy.

[curtislclay]

Pliny is not the only ancient source that specifies a date for the eruption of Vesuvius: Dio Cassius does too, stating that it occurred "towards the end of the harvesting season."

The harvesting season is late summer and early autumn, so Dio's testimony directly contradicts the traditional date of 24 August, which really has no authority at all given the numerous variations in the manuscripts of Pliny's letters! Without searching for other uses of the word, I would have thought that "late in the harvesting season" might mean the second half of October or maybe the first week of November.

I don't know on what basis earlier scholars have rejected this clear statement of Dio's and preferred the conjectured reconstruction of Pliny's date which the manuscripts do not justify. Obviously Pliny knew when the eruption occurred, but the manuscripts have not clearly transmitted the date he specified.

In the Loeb edition of Dio, E. Cary translates Dio's phrase with"at the very end of the summer". I presume that this mistranslation was dictated by acceptance of the 24 August date supposedly specified by Pliny.

[Aarmale]

I've sent an email to the people responsible for the website where the G. Stefani article is hosted (Soprintendenza archeologica di Pompei) asking if they were aware of an existing scan/photograph of the actual coin. Will see...

I hope they reply.  It would be quite interesting if the actual image is available.

[David Atherton]

Funnily enough I have a book on my shelves called "The Complete Pompeii" by Joanne Berry. If I had completely read it I would have seen the little article on page 20 which mentions the dating problem and the coin in question. No picture of the coin but there is a description of the type and why it is important to dating the eruption. The book was published in 2007 and I highly recommend it.

[curtislclay]

I was forgetting the first page of Stefani's article: there she gives a somewhat detailed "history of the question", including arguments based on Dio's contradictory date for the eruption. In summary:

Carlo Maria Rosini, in the 18th century (Wikipedia's Mt. Vesuvius article that I reproduced above gives the exact date 1797), was the first to argue for a later eruption, suggesting the date 23 Nov. (mentioned above by Commodus), on the basis of (a) Dio's statement that Vesuvius erupted in the autumn and (b) archaeological evidence suggesting a later date, notably autumnal fruits in the market and heaters that had been lit in homes. The exact date came from emending Pliny to read "the ninth day before the Kalends of December" (instead of "September").

Several other scholars, including M. Ruggiero who was director of excavations at Pompeii, and U. Pappalardo as recently as 1990, accepted and attempted to strengthen Rosini's arguments, but made little headway against the unsupported, but nevertheless entrenched traditional view, that Pliny indisputably dated the eruption to 23 August.

Stefani herself, along with the botanist M. Borgongino, was the first to add weighty new arguments in favor of a later eruption: a fuller consideration of the autumnal fruits in the markets and the dried summer fruits, plus heaters in the homes, but above all the discovery at the Villa Regina in Boscoreale of large earthenware containers of wine buried in the ground and sealed at the top, proving that at the time of the eruption the grape harvest, which took place at the end of September and in October, had already been completed.

So naturally Stefani must have been delighted to be able to confirm her own arguments by discovering the IMP XV denarius!

[David Atherton]

Has anyone been able to find an actual photo of the IMP XV Titus denarius in question? It's very perplexing that such an important piece remains hidden from view!

[Optimo Principi]

Just returned from the amazing Pompeii exhibition at the British Museum and while it raised the dating question a couple of times in a general sense, even they didn't have so much as a photo of this coin! Considering the hundreds of treasures shipped over from Naples, getting this little denarius out of the vaults shouldn't have posed that much of a problem, surely? One wonders if there is a degree of pressure from the establishment to suppress the exposure of this coin and maintain the traditional August eruption date.

[David Atherton]

One wonders if there is a degree of pressure from the establishment to suppress the exposure of this coin and maintain the traditional August eruption date.

I'm not sure why there is resistance to the new dating ... tradition? I would think historical accuracy would be more important.

Although Andrew Wallace-Hadrill has stated he is in favour of the October/November dating.

[Andrew McCabe]

Just returned from the amazing Pompeii exhibition at the British Museum and while it raised the dating question a couple of times in a general sense, even they didn't have so much as a photo of this coin! Considering the hundreds of treasures shipped over from Naples, getting this little denarius out of the vaults shouldn't have posed that much of a problem, surely? One wonders if there is a degree of pressure from the establishment to suppress the exposure of this coin and maintain the traditional August eruption date.

At least one of the exhibits in the current Pompeii exhibition explicitly says that August 79 AD is very doubtful due to various factors including references to warm clothes in historic accounts, and other evidence. That is indeed "raising the dating question" in terms much clearer than any coin could make.

The simplest reason for not displaying a particular coin is that coins make for very poor exhibition exhibits for any except a specialist. They are tiny, difficult to see, and any complicated deductions from them are never going to be understood by the average exhibition attendee. They may also have been dropped by one of the vast army of excavators that tried to recover stuff in the years immediately after the eruption. Whereas "warm clothes in August" is something everyone understands.

That's the simple explanation. But I'll get on my high horse now and ask what possible interest would the academics in the museum have, except to search always for the truth? What "establishment" might this be? Academics at the British Museum are some of the most enthusiastic searchers after new information and new ideas, they are a young, dynamic and curious bunch, confident enough to have allowed Grayson Perry free access to arrange an exhibition illustrating links between ancient and the most modern artistry. They are always looking for the truth. This sort of statement annoys me to a more than usual degree because I've faced recent battles on other discussion lists where my research work on ancient coins has been painted as biased just because I'm trying to assess new evidence which is emerging from the study of new coin material and new archaeological information.

I think curators, academics and researchers should in general be given the benefit of the doubt on their choice of evidence, and the conclusions they paint. If one is not willing to go that far, at least they should be respected for their choices, even if you would have chosen differently. At the worst, perhaps they overlooked some key new evidence, and they would welcome being advised of new information. But I would never paint the academics with whom I liaise (including those at the BM) as suppressors of evidence.

I'm not sure why there is resistance to the new dating ... tradition? I would think historical accuracy would be more important.

All those books that would have to be reprinted?  

They would be over the moon with the idea of being able to write new books with new evidence and ideas. That's what they love most of all!

[Optimo Principi]

Andrew, I should clarify I was not referring to BM curators or academics but people who can make their lives difficult when organising an exhibit e.g. Italian government etc. I agree that a single coin may not be deemed a suitable exhibit in itself and that is likely the reason for its absence, though there were other coins on show.

[Andrew McCabe]

That's ok, understood.

But I doubt whether the BM would ever willingly let the Italian government "moderate" their choice of exhibits or of story.

There is however a precedent: when the BM organized a massive exhibition of Chinese art some years back, they had to use a great deal of politics to get one or other exhibit out of China. Sometimes this involved conventional politics ("what are we going to get in return"). Sometimes it involved how the pieces should be described. There was a one-hour TV programme about the process. With Italy, I do think it's a different matter, both because less stuff is needed - one could host a pretty decent Pompeii exhibit without material currently in Italian museums - but also because it's not as sensitive as dealing with China. And anyway would the Italian government really care what the BM says or thinks? I doubt it.

[David Atherton]

The simplest reason for not displaying a particular coin is that coins make for very poor exhibition exhibits for any except a specialist. They are tiny, difficult to see, and any complicated deductions from them are never going to be understood by the average exhibition attendee. They may also have been dropped by one of the vast army of excavators that tried to recover stuff in the years immediately after the eruption. Whereas "warm clothes in August" is something everyone understands.

From what I understand the denarius in question was discovered in circumstances that would rule it out being dropped by salvage gangs in the months after the eruption or by later ancient and modern tunnellers. IMHO, a coin being dated to September at the earliest is just as straight forward and compelling as the "warm" clothing the people were wearing and the evidence of harvest time produce found buried in the town.