Odd and Still Rare

[curtislclay]

Jochen,

No, I think that's no help, it's just a victorious athlete crowning himself and holding a curving palm branch!

[Tiathena]

 
      I do thank you for those words and good advice, as always Pat.
  ‘Smart’ as it does at times, thinking you perhaps give more benefit of doubt than I have earned; to ask questions in such manner as you well advise, requires more Sunlight than I often have behind me.
  Perhaps there should nonetheless be enough to see when it is better to keep silent.
 
  I admit too, that my question and the form of its phrasing reflected my own thinking’s ‘process of elimination’ far-more than it sought – as yet – to advance your inquiry.
  Your point kindly & graciously shared is all-the-same well taken, and I thank you for it.
 
  With regard to Jochen’s coin and question above – I know this will probably sound equally ‘silly’ as my last – but, I somehow find it improbable that a god (particularly Apollo – an Archer) would ever use a bow case.
  Why would he?
  My thinking:
  The bow as symbol/attribute should be always visible.
  The bow as weapon should be ‘ever-ready.’
  The bow as a ‘thing-in-itself,’ a ‘mere-object’ as such, isn’t likely to be ‘damaged’ while in such a god’s hands (?) –
  &nd – if it were, so what?  Get another and even better one.
 
  Just my thinking out-loud again though!
 
     Best, as always –
     Tia
 

[slokind]

I think that does it.*  C'est à dire, if not proof, it takes the identification out of the category of guesswork.  Some type of Apollo evidently held a simple, fairly long bow.  It now attains the status of working hypothesis.
The hand over the head, however, is not limited to Apollo.  Just in coins of northern Greece, Pan at Pella and Haimos at Nicopolis ad Istrum, both also young males, also have what Kenneth Clark called the 'pathetic gesture' (that label started with the Vatican Ariadne).  But the Rome Apollo Sanctus also has it, though several other figures besides.
What we have yet to see on a coin with an archer deity is that simple-arc form, with the bowstring pulled and an arrow installed, in use as a bow.
Perinthos is a remarkable mint, in many respects!
Pat L.
* Hmm, while I was writing I failed to see Curtis' note.  He should be right, not least at Perinthos.  The object is shorter than the 'odd' one that heads the thread, and the figure is nude.  If he really is crowning himself (he is), his gesture is quite irrelevant to the motif nicknamed 'pathetic' after Ariadne.  Only, that 'palm' (or palm if it really is one) does seem to have a knob at the lower end (accident?).  P.L.
P.S.  As to the odd thing, again, recalling that a divining rod got mentioned as well, I did wonder whether something as rustic as a pedum but not the same shape might be shown.

[niccotnt]

I'm surely off topic, but the acting on this coin resembles another modern coin:



Cosimo III de' Medici (1670 - 1723) - Piastra 1677
The scene on the reverse is the baptism of Christ, and the figure is S. Giovanni Battista.

There are many common aspects: long hair, naked shoulder, position of the body, the long rod and pouring action.

[slokind]

It is possible that you are not quite off topic: John the Baptist is characterized as rustic, having been a wilderness hermit.  I keep seeing a hint of rusticity in this curious figure.
On the other hand, in private correspondence, Nina Hristova, referring to that great classic by Ernest Gombrich, Art and Illusion, has suggested that we are seeing the work of an engraver who is 'reproducing' a type without understanding it.  It is one of the first possibilities that occurred to me, too, though I'd forgotten about the discussion in Gombrich.  It would be unusual among the coins issued by Pontianus at Marcianopolis, but there is a remarkably anomalous Aphrodite among those issued by Agrippa at Nicopolis ad Istrum, in exactly the pose of the so-called "Medici" type, but wearing a cloak and boots, which prove that the engraver had no idea of the figure's significance.  There are other examples, too.  After all, in this region, some of the engravers might not have been so deeply imbued in Greek culture as most of them evidently were.
This is one of the reasons why insisting on an exact answer may be ill advised.
Pat L.

[slokind]

ANY possibility that this is relevant?  Like most such web sites, it doesn't say where the statue is (data that never ought to be omitted), but: http://www.eternalegypt.org/EternalEgyptWebsiteWeb/HomeServlet?ee_website_action_key=action.display.element&story_id=&module_id=&language_id=1&element_id=44
Pat L.

[Jochen]

Hi Pat!

On the r. side there are some data: It is a marble statue now in the Greco-Roman Museum in Alexandria. It was created in the 2nd century AD in Ras El Soda.

But what is that object in his l. hand?

Best regards

[slokind]

On the statue 1.25m tall (as I recall), it is a palm frond with shallow incised detail (the image zooms well).  But it is a larger and longer frond than on your athlete coin, and the youthful figuree is comparably half-draped.  The detail could have been ignored in transfer to the scale of a coin, perhaps...  On the other hand, the Marcianopolis young divinity wears no kalathos.  Yet the proportions and body language of the two figures seemed sufficiently similar that, as we do need to shed any possible light on the coin, it seemed wise to cross-link to the Hermanubis page.  Pat

[Jochen]

Nikopolis ad Istrum, Macrinus, HrJ 8.23.6.1. I see similarities: the bending of the sceptre and the knobs on both ends.

Best regards

[slokind]

Looking for something else, I ran across this, which is now in the Palazzo Massimo of the MNR in Rome.  It is one of the Provinciae Fideles (they cannot be securely identified, but this one just may be Thrace).  It is carrying a scythe— corr: sickle.  It is half draped, loose-haired, young but female, as a provincia, but it is a personification.  It must at least be added to the depictions to be compared with the Macrinus coin here.  Only, the scythe (sickle), naturally, does not have 'bulbs' on both ends.  The attitude of the depiction, however, is similar.
Pat L.

[slokind]

Bill Welch helpfully pointed out to me that the province holds a sickle, not a scythe.  It is not just a question of length or of how curved the blade is but of how it is used, for which reason the blade is attached to cut horizontally while the handle is held by a standing reaper.
But we agree, either way, the indefinite one on the Odd by Still Rare tetrassarion, whether Malcolm's die or mine, is a reaping tool, which suits my sense of the figure as being of the same genre as a Bonus Eventus or a hermanubis or even (but he's hoary or at least bearded) a Saturn.
And thanks to Bill; this isn't the first time he's known the right word that I didn't know for a real tool.
Pat

[Robert_Brenchley]

A sickle's a lot easier to use, but it does your back in if you have to use it for long! I could never get the hang of a scythe, but an expert could cut corn all day long.

[Jochen]

An old thread but an actual problem until today!

In reply #24 I have shared a coin from Perinthos where an athlete is crowning himself and has a bended rod in his l. arm. Curtis Clay in reply #25 called this bended rod a curved palm branch. And that could well be.


But now I got a coin from Ankyra with a similar rev. of  an athlete crowning himself who has an equally bended rod in his l. arm. Here I don't think that it is a curved palm branch because the rod is equally smooth.

What do you think?

Best regards

[slokind]

That is a beauty, and I am convinced that the curved object is the one that puzzled us.  The question is, whether the nude youth holding it here and wearing an ornate crown is the personification of Hieros Agon, as the legend in the nominative case on the reverse suggests to me.  And then, what would they have called this thing in antiquity?  The Ankyra coin does eliminate several of our hyptheses, as of sickles.  The little knob at its tip, too, is different from that on Serapis' staff.
Bravo!
Pat L.
P.S. And that takes care of the Perinthos coin (above), too.   This is no Apollo, and neither is the Perinthos one.  And the gesture is universal for crowning oneself, as he is doing at Perinthos, too.  And as for palm, I agreed with Curtis, and on the Ankyra coin we have a bit of palm in the field to l. of the figure and the curved object on his right arm.  I am inclined to think of the curved object as an official's staff (probably regarded as very anciently traditional or perhaps the badge of a priest assigned an agonistic office).
But what was it called?

[Noah]

Goodness Jochen, that is a wonderful coin!  Thanks for sharing it and bringing in great discussion.  Pat, it is nice to see you active in the threads I frequent most.  I have missed your poignant and insightful observations!  How have you been?

Best, Noah