FORVM`s Classical Numismatics Discussion Board
Numismatic and History Discussion Forums => Roman Provincial Coins Discussion Forum => Topic started by: Jochen on January 09, 2006, 05:44:05 pm
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Hi!
Today I got this coin which was already attributed (I hope correct!) but it is absolut unknown what is depicted on the reverse. Therefore I hope I could find help on this wonderful Forum!
It is an AE27 from Marcianopolis struck under the legate Furius Pontianus for Macrinus and Diadumenian.
AE27, 13.58g
obv. AV K OPPELCEVH MAKREINOC / KM OPPEL AN - TWNINOC DI / ADOYMHN
confronted busts of Diadumenian, bare-headed, l., and Macrinus, laureate, r.
rev. VP PONTIAN - OY MARKIAN - OPOLITWN
female figure, with chignon, nude to hip(?), sitting on rock l., holding in extended r. hand
bunch of flowers(?), resting with l. arm on font(?), rabbit r. on ground
E in l. field (for Pentassarion)
AMNG 755 (only 1 ex.)
There are very beautiful details on the rev. (bunch of flowers, rabbit!) but actually I don't not even wether my description is correct!
Anyone does know the figure? Is it a bunch of flowers she is holding? What is that where her l. arm is resting?
My alternatives are a deity of the region or a river-goddess(?).
Any information highly welcomed!
Best regards
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Oh my god, what a beauty again, Jochen!
I've found this specimen with different obverse, but from the same reverse die, on Coinarchives (AMNG 756). The description states it probably is a "Bergnymphe" (so a mountain nymph, in English); here the complete reverse image description:
Bergnymphe (?) mit Zweig in der Rechten und auf Felsen gestütztem linken Arm nach links gelagert, rechts unten nach rechts laufender Bär (?); im Feld links E.
Lars
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Pat will love this one. It is an interesting variant. It shows all the attributes of the River god (male), branch and overflowing jug of water, but represents a mountain nymph. For comparison, here is the Markianopolis river god.
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Thanks for your inputs! A mountain nymph would make sense! But the animal I think is actually a rabbit or better a hare on the reverse. I can see clearly his long ears on my coin!
best regards
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The female figure is a topographic personification like the Haimos, but for something that has a feminine-gender name. Particularly if that was a Spring, perhaps the source of a tributary river, then it is quite all right, I think, to call it a Nymph; similarly, if she is a particular named Peak in the Haimos range, if it had a feminine-gender name, a female figure would be used. For, as Pick observes, she also occurs on a Pontianus reverse in Nicopolis.
As it happens, I don't own the Marcianopolis ones, and the one with busts is very important to me, because it shares that reverse with one of the confronted heads dies of Pontianus at Marcianopolis that all but certainly are the work of an engraver who worked for him at both places. A couple of the dies used with such Pontianus obverses at Nicopolis (these are the sharp-chinned ones that look like no other Macrinus heads anywhere) continued to be used with reverses bearing Agrippa's name instead, as Pick noted (AMNG I, 1, p. 432), and I am extremely interested to see that the confronted busts die is the multiply-linked one that it is!
Now I want to do a bit of hunting off line. Meanwhile, here is a pair of coins illustrating the sort of style I alluded to. Never mind whether it is the very same hand or not; it is the crossover that is significant.
Pat L.
Here is a stylistically more emphatic Marcianopolis E coin to make the same point.
23 06 03 AE 26+ 14.97g Marcianopolis Issued by Pontianus. Heads of Diadumenian, to r., and Macrinus, laureate, to l. AV K OPPEL SEVEta MAKRINOS and below K M OPPELI / ANTONIN / OS. All sigmas and epsilons squared. (This is the rare die Pick, AMNG I, 1, p. 235, no. 716, known to Pick only through a cast of Imhoof's, and p. 246, no. 773 with a Liberalitas reverse = 770, ex. 3, pl. XIX, 2). Rev., Homonoia. bareheaded, stg. l. with cornucopiae and patera, making libation over burning garlanded altar. VP PONTIANOV MARKIA[NOPO] and in exergue LITON. The E for 5 is rounded, but the other letters recall those on obverse, though a little less spiky. (Not in Pick, but reasonably regarded as a variant of p. 245, no. 767).
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For starters, here are Pick's Taf. XVIII, 7 (Nicopolis) and 8 (Marcianopolis).
For Jochen's, the plaster cast in the image is from Bucharest, the only specimen at Pick's disposal. For the Nicopolis one, fig. 7, it is from the Löbbecke collection, since dispersed.
Yes, Jochen, I am sure that if Pick had seen yours, he'd have seen the rabbit! And that recalls, of course, the animals on the Haimos reverses, tending to strengthen, if ever so slightly, the association of this feminine type with that masculine one: the same kind of a topographic personification.
As for Nicopolis, for real metal instead of a photogravure of a cast, here is one of my two (the other has more patina, but this one is more legible on screen):
10 07 03 AE 29 14.72g Issued by Pontianus at Nicopolis ad Istrum. Macrinus, laureate, head to r., the crossover die also used by Agrippa (Pick, p. 432). [AV K] OPPEL SE | VE MAKRINOS, with squared E and sigma. Rev., bareheaded topographic female (Moesia?), as on Marcianopolis nos. 755-6, pl. XVIII, 8, seated on chair but leaning her l. elbow on rocks behind her; in her r. hand flowers (?). VP PONTIANOV (partly faint) NIKOPOLITON and in exergue PROS IST, squared sigmas. Both dies, Pick, AMNG I, 1, p. 432, no. 1682, pl. XVIII, 7. This example is more than 4.5g heavier than the Loebbecke one (10.10g), but very yellow where flecks of patina are missing.
One of you said, Pat will really love this one. Indeed! I thought I had a Marcianopolis, but very likely I only bid on 'em unsuccessfully!
Pat
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This is my example, which appears to be a die match of Jochens. It does not help in determining what exactly is depicted in the bottom right though. ~I'm not 100% convinced I see a rabbit/hare. Using a bit of imagination I can see a dolphin sitting on her lap as well :).
Also, is "she" nude to hip? I thought I saw some folds of drapery on her shoulders - perhaps very diaphanous though?
Just thoughts-
-:Bacchus:-
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Thanks, Bacchus, for sharing your coins! First I thought my coin would be rare, but now I see how many coins of this type exist.
Ok, then I think it is more probably a bear, coming out of his cave! That would match the depictions of the Haimos rev. too! And a closer look on the drapery shows the deity is draped above the hip too!
Best regards
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I think that these are still scarce (rather than rare) and yours is by far the best preserved example - (so I wouldn't get too disheartened :D ). It is a worthy addition to your enviable collection -
I think I had assumed that the deity was leaning on just a rock, her elbow taking the weight - the rock detail perhaps indicating a spring or water source - It would be a true friend indeed (animal or human) that would allow her to lean on their head like that. However it is possible that it does represent a cave etc.
All the best
-:Bacchus:-
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Bacchus wrote "she"--thus. Her hair and garment are feminine. In another thread I referred to the blousing at the waist, called a kolpos (not that the word is fundamentally about garments). She certainly is fully clad. Her cloak, himation, seems to be largely draped over that rock of hers. I do think Jochen was right the first time: the animal is crouching like a rabbit and does have long ears; the Haimos engraver captures the pacing, prowling, nose to ground body-language of a bear. Haimos is a whole mountain range and may have been as well known for its bears as the American ozarks are for wild pigs.
The figures are very alike, as Pick saw, at the two mints, but I think they may have had different names: the details on and about the seat are different. But the flowers, as they seem to be, should indeed have similar signification.
It is not impossible that these coins, so rare till recently, all were found together though I don't mean in one hoard. We may be very fortunate indeed to know them better than Pick and Imhoof-Blumer did. But, guys, if another Marcianopolis turns up, I've got dibs, unless a suitable permanent repository gets it. But I do have both the obverse dies, and Jochen's specimen is pretty surely the best we shall see. Pat L.
These coins always remind me of lines from my early youth:
And the nymphs of the fountains
Descend from the mountains
Edith Sitwell, Façade, Waltz (set to music by the very young William Walton)
The classical tradition is so strong in everything we know (my generation at least); Sitwell toured the USA performing Façade in 1950, and everyone in my art school also had the 10" vinyl LP recording of it (still have it).
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I must be going blind. For the life of me, I do not see a bear or rabbit. In the river god specimen, you can see the curl of water spilling from the jug. I see that same curl in the goddess specimens. Perhaps the water is spilling down a mountain in the latter specimen?
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Whitetd,
The bunny is just left of the N of MARKIAN, crouching right on all fours.
Some years ago when I was cataloguing this type for our stock, it occurred to me that this lady reclining on rocks, holding branch ending in twigs and leaves, and with rabbit below, is virtually identical to the reclining HISPANIA of Hadrian's province series! But what can have caused Spain and her rabbit to migrate to the lower Danube?
Regards,
Curtis
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An epiphany, I see it! Just to make it worse, the same rabbit is also present on the river god specimen that I posted. In response to your question, perhaps these reclining figures with water and rabbits are stock reverses celebrating the abundance of the land?
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But what can have caused Spain and her rabbit to migrate to the lower Danube?
Cults, their gods and goddesses along with all their symbols and accoutraments followed and traveled with but one force! The legions :)
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But Hispania is a geographical personification, not a cult figure. I doubt that even the presence of a large Spanish contingent in the legions of Lower Moesia would lead to a depiction of Spain on the provincial coins.
Rabbit and olive branch seem specific to Spain, not general attributes of fertility. Spain was famous for its rabbits: Stevenson cites Pliny reporting that rabbits undermined one whole Spanish town with their burrows.
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Granted coins used women to represent cities or provinces - but I was thinking more along the lines of the roman goddess Flora - as opposed to a representation of spain. And provinicials tended to copy coins and I'm sure cross train die makers - so its not surprising that the coins share a common theme accross the empire. Especially in the provicincial mints where latin and greek mixed in wierd ways on the coins themselves - let alone the themes. Having said that I'm very inexperienced and bow to the greater wisdom of the experienced ones - I'm merely guessing.
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I think the advice from Curtis at the coins of Hadrian with the reclining HISPANIA is an evidence that the animal is a rabbit. They both have the same shape.
The coin is Hadrian RIC 306 From Wildwinds.
Best regards
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Tentative revelation: That Hispania proves what an infallible eye (excuse my enthusiasm, please) Curtis has! That is why someone (was it Pick? was it I?--it is in my notes), but SOMEONE suggested that the lady is Moesia (Inferior), and now that seems to me the leading idea. It also explains why both Marcianopolis and Nicopolis, the very two mints that were used for Macrinus and Diadumenian and were both used by Pontianus, have the same figure. And, indeed, the Hadrianic type might have been suggested as a model to the engraver or might have been known to him as a stock in trade type. It is (by and large) a fact, Greco-Roman artists invented nothing if they could borrow instead (not just laziness; such a type would have been easy for anyone to register correctly as a region or province).
Thank you, Curtis. What a great lesson (IMHO).
Pat Lawrence
Possibly the pre-existent Haimos type encouraged including the Spanish rabbit (it is so cute, anyway), having as many as three animals (on the one issued by Gallus); the Haimos, first issued by Tertullus for both Septimius and Domna, also had been issued for Macrinus by Longinus at Nicopolis, only months, perhaps, earlier than the present coins, perhaps Moesia, the province dominated by the Haimos as much as by the Ister--which you don't see the way you see the mountains.
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In the river god specimen, you can see the curl of water spilling from the jug.
Isn't that coin (the one you posted earlier) the same reverse as Jochen's? Or are we talking about another coin?
Steve
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I think Pat and I corresponded privately about this question a couple of years ago, and I may have told her I had hit on the Spain idea while cataloguing the coin, before I had acquired a copy of AMNG, then was pleased to find Pick too had had the same idea after obtaining his work.
P. 194, note 3: "Friedlaender and von Sallet regard the figure as the personification of the region, Ge or Tellus." Note 4: "The type is also reminiscent of some of the personifications of provinces on the famous coins of Hadrian, for example HISPANIA."
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Steve, I posted the third picture, the male figure. Interestingly, they both have the curl of water and the rabbit!
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Maybe I am getting very confused here, but I see no male figure - unless I am mistaken the coin you posted is from the same rev die as Jochen's?
Steve
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I'm sorry, Jochen's original post shows a female figure, note the hair. Bacchus (I believe) posted another example from the same reverse die. Then I posted the "normal" river god reverse (male) for comparison. Thus began the "mountain nymph" variant discussion.
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Whitetd,
I have to agree with Steve, it can't be a male on your coin, because it is from the same reverse die as the previous two coins of Jochen and Bacchus, and the same dies both sides as Jochen's! It's just that on your specimen the hair bun and falling locks were not struck up.
Curtis
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OK, I see it now. The wear on the coin, especially the hair, fooled me. No wonder the other details were the same!
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Thank you to all for a very interesting thread. A wabbit it is then. Curtis has the unfair advantage of having god-like attribution powers, I would never have thought of linking the "Spanish rabbit" example to this. A lesson here for me (again!) is that while it is a good idea to focus your own collection it always pays to know everything about everything else as well.
(No takers for the dolphin on the lap theory then ;D)
-:Bacchus:-
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I mistakenly posted in the Nikopolis Demeter thread an aureus of Laelian with a lady personification and a rabbit, apparently derived from the Hadrianic Hispania type. See it there, or I'll add it here, if you want. P.L.
And here it is, by request. Note Curtis's remark at the other thread (Nicopolis Demeter).
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I have hunted in vain for a map that shows (really shows) the Haimos range, the sites of Nicopolis and Marcianopolis, and the modern town of Lovech, which is IN the Haimos, more or less south of Nicopolis, all together on one map. I guess I'd better buy the Barrington atlas before falling in love with another three-digit coin. I can't get Google World satellite images for Bulgaria, for some reason. The photos that show how lovely Stara Planina is, on line, just show details, such as waterfalls and streets and stuff, lovely as those are. Nicopolis itself (there are excavated area photos) is still as flat as Rousse, being relatively close to the River. But the town of Lovech is right in the mountains, which means it gathers clouds and rains, but here is what I could get showing the setting. I strongly believe in seeing what places are really like! Now that this thread is in Numism (I noted today), I shall add this one image. Pat L.
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What a beautiful addition! I think so should be a living thread!
Thanks Pat!
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I hope this comes close to ahcieving the effect Pat was after:
Steve
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I know that this discussion has moved off from the original and has been on for a while, but only today have I been able to render my Haimos example to a size that is acceptable for uploading. It may be a bit too big as it is but I will try. Anyway, just to show it off. It is not Macrinus or Diadumenian, but a Sept Sev bronze.
c.rhodes
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Unlisted! Gentianus! The earliest of all known, since Gentianus preceded Tertullus. A discovery like this is, IMO, important. And it has the name HAIMOS already (though its identify would be certain even without it). And look, he crosses his legs, his right shank over his left (nearer to us). Thank you! What shall we have next? An Auspex 'Moesia'? Studying Greek Imperials is as much fun as studying sestertii must have been in the Renaissance.
Pat Lawrence
P.S. 17:52 16 Jan 05
Yes, I ought to have said, a hunting spear, and I shouldn't be surprised if there were an animal on the die, but I've just been through CoinArchives and found no other Haimos issued by Gentianus. Don't you think they're always hunting spears? Pat
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I see the spear on Haimos. I think it is not a war spear but for hunting only!
Wonderful found!
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I'm attaching a scan of another example of Jochen's "unknown beauty," which displays the same bunny and also the same curious feature above it, a pair of round bumps where the lady is leaning, intrinsically not very comfortable and also not very esthetic. If you survey the various examples from Markianopolis above -- the same singular features including the bunny don't seem to appeal to Nikopolis, with a Haemus-type all of its own -- where the lady is leaning you can probably see not just two curious head-shaped bumps but two bodies extending below them; whatever we make of the principal lady herself (she starts looking more and more like personified Moesia), these supporting hulks may well refer to the famous twin mountains Rhodope and Haemus, two famed overreachers and incestuous lovers petrified into human-shaped mountains according to Ovid and others *:
Ovid's Metamorphoses Book 6.87-89:
http://etext.virginia.edu/latin/ovid/trans/Metamorph6.htm#480077257
Lodovico Dolce's 16th-c. illustration:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Be37drSr_mMC&pg=PA131&dq=inauthor:ovidio+intitle:trasformationi&lr=&as_brr=1&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=0_0
Now there's a mythological type for you!
* Their shocking adventures were even a subject for pantomime (Lucian, De saltatione 51):
"Thrace, too, has much that is indispensable to the pantomime: of the head of murdered Orpheus, that sang while it floated down the stream upon his lyre; of Haemus and of Rhodope; and of the chastisement of Lycurgus." (http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/luc/wl2/wl219.htm)
Ps.-Plutarch (2nd-c. AD?), "De fluviis," reportedly also refers to their offspring (or off-spring), the famed River Hebrus (Kleiner Pauly, short entry on Haimos, most likely misstating the source -- see #46 below), which we may also have on our coin as the wave to their left. If you think this is cluttered symbolic topography, compare this fraught Severan reverse (Varbanov [Bulg.] 3408 [= Eng. 5174]) from Pautalia in Thrace (something similar from Philippopolis nearby), just a short hike from Markianopolis:
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I just happened on one fairly definite proof that Jochen's "unknown beauty" has a good deal to do with the woman-turned-mountain Rhodope; see the following scan (from Varbanov [Bulg.] 57) of two rare Philippopolis issues of Antoninus Pius, both quite clearly captioned :Greek_Rho::Greek_Omicron::Greek_Delta::Greek_Omicron::Greek_Pi::Greek_Eta:. I don't currently have access to the English Varbanov, or to Varbanov's sources, or to this Imhoof-Blumer citation *, apparently illustrated; can anyone else give a hand so that we can compare the Markianopolis tableau with its Thracian precursors in clearer detail? As for what that tableau shows or means to suggest, it seems likely to me that the Markianopolis type represents a reworking of the :Greek_Rho::Greek_Omicron::Greek_Delta::Greek_Omicron::Greek_Pi::Greek_Eta:-scene that I'm presently posting, but the now-doubled armrest (Rhodope and Haemus) lets the lady preside over not just Rhodope but the whole Moesia region more generally. There is certainly no shortage of symbolic persons as armrests on classical coins, though the point may not be topographical; consider concordia and spes (search-terms run on coinarchives.com/a).
* Varbanov's cited sources:
1) Moushmov, Philippolis 1924 (Varbanov's reference-list entry 62, also cited by RPC without illustration at http://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/coins/7429/, though the RPC entry does hint that this drawing's the best we can get).
2) Ulrike Peter, ed., Stephanos Numismatikos, Edith Schönert-Geiss Festschrift (Varbanov's reference-list entry 69 -- see this previous posting on Peter's work:
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=38878.msg246485#msg246485).
As for my Imhoof-Blumer citation, Nymphen und Chariten, pp. 171-72, #471, Plate XI rev., it's apparently from Schönert-Geiss's own Bibliographie zur antiken Numismatik Thrakiens und Mösiens (Google Books partial view, searching "Nymphen und Chariten" Rhodope). I could not find the coins on http://www.philippopolis.e-xtracts.com/; someone else will perhaps have more luck with this.
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A photograph of the same example of Pius's PODOPI coin cited by RPC is shown on Plate 8, #4 (attributed to Paris), illustrating Ulrike Peter's article "Religious-Cultural Identity in Thrace and Moesia Inferior," in Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces, Howego, et al., ed., pp.107-114. Those with access to a major research library might profit from plowing through the works cited in her footnotes (and she knows how to transliterate!). George Spradling
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Gordian_guy wrote: "It is not Macrinus or Diadumenian, but a Sept Sev bronze."
Slokind wrote:"Unlisted! Gentianus! The earliest of all known, since Gentianus preceded Tertullus. A discovery like this is, IMO, important."
Below is a later one, struck under Gallus. Also quite rare...I think, with a bear springing r. toward a deer fleeing r..
PeteB
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Here is a even more later type where you can see clearly the bear and the fleeing deer. It is the mountain god Haimos too even if his name is not mentioned on the coin.
Best regards
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Eager to supplement the drawing in Varb. Bulg., I hastened to provide scans of such photos as there are, which support the drawing in the particulars that concern us here.
It has been said here in other contexts, and first by Pick, that there is indeed a close relationship between the mints of Philippopolis and Nicopolis ad I. Further, each does have a beautiful mountain range near by (on a clear day): see the map in Reply #29, Rhodope being due south of Philippopolis. So similarities in token terrain are not surprising.
Besides, there were established ways of doing things, for some of which the prototypes may not have been sculptural. Pick himself (I'd have to check to be quite sure) suggested a pictorial source for the famous Haimos series.
The reason Rhodope isn't the same kind of figure is that the name is feminine gender, but indeed her seat is rocky and she benignly overlooks Philippopolis to her north. Also, is Haimos a more woodsy mountain? No matter, he has to be masculine anyway.
Pautalia's very sanctuary is on a rocky hillside, as several coins show. I don't really know, since I've never seen the coin in the condition of Jochen's Elagabalus Haimos, whether the reclining figure (on whose identity Ruzicka already has a long bilbiography) is a topographical nymph or the Strymon, though the hairstyle is not that of an 'adult' male river--how big is the Strymon this far upstream?-- and, as a nymph, she might be naked from the waist up, if that's how they thought of her, a wild nature nymph, perhaps? But only one image that I found, in Wildwinds (attached), might show bare breasts. I'd love to have the Domna one, which judging from Varbanov's estimated prices is twice as rare as Caracalla's, but the reverse seems to be the same. The almost 19th-century American explicitness of the products that enriched a city watered by the annual melt off Rhodope and by the metals for which the Balkans are famous always reminds me of some medal celebrating California statehood.
Anyhow, I wouldn't be surprised if the Antonine Rhodope coins didn't prompt Nicopolis and Marcianopolis to issue truly competitive topographicals, and Nicopolis to label her Haimos, even though their mountains are of different grammatical genders.
Pat L.
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Thank you, George, for those leads, and these helpful scans, Pat -- as you note, they do point to a kind of a twinning between the two differently named mountain-portrait-coins we've been addressing -- and Jochen, that is definitely a precious and beautiful specimen of one of those types at its finest, though no longer expressly named "Haimos" in this final mode. Shifting back a few years to the start of the Moesian series, while Nikopolis answers the Rhodope-type with a named mountain-type of its own, Markianopolis instead drops the caption from the Rhodope-type but keeps virtually everything else, with two token stone-totems Rhodope and Haemus supporting the regional figure at center, who now takes in both. At this point, pretty clearly, we are dealing with more than one way of personifying and picturing the famed Thracian mountains Rhodope and Haemus, an impression entirely consistent with the short Kleiner Pauly discussion that I cite above. Back to Markianopolis and that bunny; what is that bunny doing in the picture at all, and right there at the feet of the figures I think we should see as myth-figures Rhodope and Haemus once they've been transformed? He is doing what bunnies and hares in old pictures quite often do best, signifying libido; here's what we find in 3rd-c. Philostratus (Imagines 1.6: "For you know, I imagine, what is said of the hare, that it possesses the gift of Aphrodite to an unusual degree"), with this translator's note (Arthur Fairbanks, Loeb Library version, from 1931):
"This tradition of the fertility [sic] of the hare is frequently mentioned by ancient writers; cf. Herod. iii. 108; Arist. de gen. anim. 777a32, Hist. anim. 542b31, 574b30, 585a5; Plut. Mor. 829E; Aelian, Hist. anim. 13.12" (http://www.theoi.com/Text/PhilostratusElder1A.html#n17)
Thanks to Google Books we can now access Hercher's (outdated) edition of that pseudo-Plutarch citation (from an essay "De fluviis") directly, and here's what it says of our lovers on pp. 61-62 (= 11.3-4 [my translation]):
"Next to it [the river Strymon] are the mountains Rhodope and Haemus; happening to be brother and sister the two fell in love; he addressed her as "Hera," and she knew her lover as "Zeus." The dishonored gods [brother and sister as well!] took offense at their conduct, and transformed those two into mountains that now bear their names. In those mountains rise so-called deep-black incestuous rocks [lithoi philadelphoi] that look like human beings [anthrwpomimoi] ... Thrasyllos speaks of them ... in his Thrakika." (http://books.google.com/books?id=vHECAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22de+fluviis%22#PPA61,M1)
Joining this with the Metamorphoses citation above, I think we have the key to our Haemus-Rhodope tableau, fuzzy-bunny and all; of course others may still disagree -- why would Markianopolis see fit to put any of this on a coin? -- but the same could be asked of the story of Leda, which nonetheless takes center-stage on a memorable coin. Worth considering! archivum
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Thank you for your indepth search and finding of these interesting excerpts! But to my feeling it is a bit over-interpreted if the 'innocent' bunny turns the depiction into an allusion to the sexual sphere.
Best regards
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Jochen, you're certainly welcome to your point of view, but remember that doves, swans, and cupids, like bunnies, are traditional sex- or innocence-symbols depending on their actual context, and a context of Haemus-Rhodope transformed on these terms doesn't say much for innocence. As for over-interpreting here, I'd say my readings actually economize effort, since we no longer need to account for how our topographical bunny came to transfer its interests from Spain; but of course that's another respect where appraisals may differ.
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Rabbits nearly overran Spain, hence their presence with Hispania. Naturally, being rabbits, they did so quite innocently. College kids used to call 'fast' fraternity boys 'rabbits'. But putting a rabbit beside Hispania did not mean that Spain was a sexier place than other provinces. If, as the coins suggest, Nicopolitans not only met bear on Haimos but also shot deer and netted rabbits, well, I'm sure the Spaniards made rabbit stew, too. (Cajuns, who may take as many nuisancy nutria as they like, tell me that nutria meat isn't as good as rabbit). Yes, it is Marcianopolis that uses the hare with Moesia, but I imagine that hares were for the taking in the ancient Balkans generally. I am sure that the prolific fertility of those rodents did not escape the notice of any ancients. Pat L.
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The EU Agricultural Structure Survey (for which I do my countrys bit) include rabbits as one of the "farmed animals" so there is still enough "rabbit stew" being made to warrant measurement at a fairly high level.
Malcolm
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Thanks to being much-devoted to Eros -- see the Kyzikos coin in response #51 -- hares could stand for fertility too, and on one Gordian issue hares do clearly figure as symbols for Moesia, perhaps for that reason as well as because of the coin-type that we've been discussing:
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-851
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=6969.msg51516#msg51516
On the other hand, we've been discussing a case where the hare seems to stand at the feet of myth-persons transformed into mountains; if that claim about what's being depicted holds up, I would say that it's under-interpreting not to ask why this particular hare's standing there at their feet and not off on its own. It's a little distracting to process the sight of a hare right by those person-mimicking stones pseudo-Plutarch remarks on unless the hare has some specific connection with those very stones; person-mimicking stones are odd venues for bunnies even if fruitful mountains are not. We can either ignore the distinction (and maybe we're meant to, though that's a bit clumsy where other details on this coin most emphatically aren't) or else get what assistance we can from an imagery-guide for the era in question, which is what Philostratus provides us with. An impossibly cluttered symbolic arrangement? No more so than Spes-Hope, flower in hand, as an armrest for Concord personified. But as Freud might have granted without in fact giving much up in the process, some bunnies are doubtless just bunnies, even as some cigars are just that.
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Now that is interesting! Viminacium with a hare (and of course all these 'bunnies' are hares) instead of a lion or a bull for a legionary type. That is very interesting indeed. Pity that we don't have Viminacium as early as 217/8. Pat L.
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There is a useful discussion of Rhodope in Roscher's Ausfuehrliches Lexikon of Greek mythology 4.116, which points up these additional leads for whoever is interested:
-- Servius on Aen. 1.317, on the old reading "Hebrum" for "Eurum," describes Hebrus as born of Rhodope and Haemus (Hebrus features by name on another Philippopolis issue = Varbanov [Bulg.] 710); I think Servius is really the source for this detail in the *Kleiner Pauly* as well, rather than ps.-Plutarch "De fluviis."
-- Pick remarks on the Rhodope coin-type in AMNG 1/1, 194 and 342 n. 5; he connects it, though loosely, with most of the coin-types that we've been discussing.
-- The rare Rhodope type also gets a brief notice in Head
http://www.snible.org/coins/hn/thrace.html#Philippopolis
Mionnet
http://books.google.com/books?id=J4ICAAAAYAAJ&printsec=titlepage#PRA1-PA416,M1
and Eckhel
http://books.google.com/books?id=J0n11GxYAN0C&printsec=titlepage#PPA44,M1,
and I'm particularly interested in Eckhel's paraphrase of the entry for this coin in Pierre Seguin's Selecta Numismata Antiqua (ca. 1670), p. 157 (should be pp. 150-51 *), since it clearly alludes to the metamorphosis-to-mountains that I've been examining: "Existimat Seguinus, figura muliebri sisti Rhodopen Strymonis F[iliam] in montem mutatam." (A. Tacchella [RN 1902, 177] notes the feminine figure's suggestion of this metamorphosis as well.)
* See the excerpt now posted thanks to Numerianus at https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=45730.msg288304#msg288304:
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FWIW, An illustration of what kind of rabbits inhabit Bulgaria:
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^^ I thought for a second you would be posting a bulgarian ski bunny :afro:
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That's not such a bad topical joke -- there are bunnies and then there are bunnies, and this is quite clearly one mountain-variety to reckon with.
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In the Forvm Books and References board, Numerianus, responding to a request by Archivum, reproduced Seguin's comments on Rhodope, from his book Selecta Numismata Antiqua, Paris 1665.
Seguin says that in antiquity two identifications were proposed for Rhodope, after whom the mountain near Philippopolis was named. Some authors said Rhodope was a Thracian queen who had been interred on the mountain or had been transformed into the mountain. Other authors claimed that she was a nymph, the daughter of the river Strymon, who was impregnated by Neptune and gave birth to Athon, after whom a mountain was also named.
The coin type, Seguin says, favors the second identification, for the woman depicted there has no royal attributes befitting a queen, but is instead half nude like a naiad, while the plant she holds, and the plant growing behind her, look like river plants.
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Curtis, thanks for that paraphrase; Seguin is right that the Rhodope figure is not so much queenly as nymphlike, just as the Nikopolis Haimos looks less like a king than a lusty young huntsman at ease. Seguin doesn't connect the two topographical issues as we have, and as Pick does also(AMNG 1/1, 342, n. 5); once we do link the two, and do reference the myth of twinned metamorphoses-to-mountains, it's equally natural to reference the notion that the two form a couple of some sort, romantic in life, topographic-symbolic in afterlife. The idyllic way they're both depicted as persons softens their famous regional myth even as it obliquely recalls it, so that their transformation to mountains can be represented as more like a fulfillment than a punishment.
To return to another related motif (see resps. ##39 ff., above), bearing out a theme out of third-century Philostratus (Imagines 1.6: "For you know, I imagine, what is said of the hare, that it possesses the gift of Aphrodite to an unusual degree"), here's a lovely and rare second-century Kyzikos issue with an image of Eros the bunny-hunter (cf. http://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/coins/765 and 777), from http://www.coinarchives.com/a/lotviewer.php?LotID=114678&AucID=131&Lot=336:
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Nice find!
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A bit closer to Moesia and Marcianopolis is another version of the type of Eros holding up a hare, on a coin (unpublished?) of Commodus from Philippopolis in Thrace.
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Thanks for posting this, Francis; remarkable, and right in the loop, since we're interested in a kind of dialogue between coin-types in this same vicinity (resp. #46 etc.). I hope you'll let RPC in on this one, important and beautiful.
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Thanks for the reminder! I do send things to RPC sometimes, but I must somehow have forgotten this one. The RPC IV database is such a useful resource that we should all do our bit to support it. Anyhow, it's on its way now.
And: here's another Philippopolitan hare, on CoinArchives:
http://www.coinarchives.com/a/results.php?results=100&search=Philippopolis+AND+hare
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Here's another one, just like the other one, but not the same one. An early purchase from FORVM. George Spradling
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I wonder what these hares are doing on the Moesian/Thracian coins? If the hare is no more than just an appropriate symbol for the region (because of the supposed super-abundance of the animals), why then is Moesia waving it about on the Viminacium coins (year 4) for Gordian? Why isn't the animal merely hopping about on the baseline, like the legionary animals on the commonest Viminacium coins?
Now, if the hare were a tribal totem animal in the Balkans, and Gordian's generals had beaten up or intimidated the local tribals on the emperor's way to the East (through Moesia) in 242-3, that might just explain why Moesia (the Roman province) is shown waving her hunting booty. (Are there any Moesian/Thracian experts out there who know about the local cultures?) :)
An even wilder thought, regarding the Viminacium hare coins: At the risk of turning into an Erotic monomaniac, might not the Moesia coins not only include the "Balkan bunny" as a familiar provincial symbol but also echo the Eros-with-hare motif, known from statues in Philippopolis and elsewhere, and refer - with sly flattery - to the young imperial visitor, for whose future fecundity and ability to establish a stable dynasty his loyal subjects might well invoke the help of Eros and Aphrodite?
Speculation upon speculation! :laugh:
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I would of course defer to Curtis' wisdom on the topic of Viminacium's bunny coins, but I've done my own extensive speculating on this topic. I've written my thoughts down in the notes for this coin in my tantalus album:
http://www.tantaluscoins.com/coins/24233.php
Cheers!
Scott S.
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A curious animal for a province (or an emperor) to be sacrificing on an important occasion - unless the hare indeed had some local totemic significance! But it doesn't look particularly like a sacrificial scene, does it? A most puzzling type. (And I wish I had one.) :)
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It just so happens that CNG has one up for auction right now if you are interested in overpaying. :) Something interesting about these Viminacium Bunny coins is that they show up maybe 2 or 3 times a year and they are almost always in the same condition (ie, I've never seen a high grade specimen) unlike other similar rarities which have a high grade specimen pop up once every 2 or 3 years.
Regarding the scene as a sacrificial scene, as my notes state, I'm more inclined to view this reverse as having overtones of being a "Moesia as Demeter" scene. If it were to have any connection to the Emporer sacrificing reverse I would say the bunny scene is more likely supposed to mean some kind of offering of abundance. Just my guesswork though.
Scott S.
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Thanks for the tip, Scott. I had indeed noticed the coin. I won't comment on prices; let's just say that for a coin that is not directly what I collect, it would not be a sensible buy. Once you start collecting things that are only tangential to your interests life starts to get expensive, and I'm a bit too old to be broadening my collecting interests. It would be nice to have a Viminacium bunny, however, as a pendant to the much rarer Eros coin, and it would be good to get to the bottom of the question of these Balkan rabbits/hares.
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Regarding the Viminacium Bunny prices, if you are patient you can probably find one on Ebay within the next year that will sell for 50 to 75 bucks. Not cheap, but that is about as good as it gets. There is usualy about one each year that goes for that price, but you have to be thorough with your searches and lucky. The weakened dollar certainly hurts too, and is likely a major contributor to CNG's insane prices of late.
Oddly enough I bought a bunny Vim at a CNG auction about a year ago. It was misattributed and sold in a bulk lot. I spotted thier error and turned a small profit after I liquidated the lot (keeping the bunny coin of course). :) I also found one about 2 years ago on a dealer's private website. It was baddly corroded and barely attributable, but the seller had no idea what they had and sold it to me for 18 bucks. Not bad for a fully attributable bunny coin.
The bargains are out there for those willing to sink time into looking for them I reckon. But then again, it certainly has helped me that I specialize in Viminacium coins too!
Scott S.
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I still can't make out the rabbit. Are its ears flopping down and is it facing right or at us, is the left hand of the nymph on its head? Can't make out fromt paws from haunches. (sorry)
Raymond
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You are probably referring to the photo in resp. #44, where it's Moesia that's holding the hare (it is Eros that's doing the holding on the Cyzicus and Philippopolis coins in resps. #51 and 53); all are holding the hapless hares by their hind feet, and their ears all point more or less leftward and up.
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Now a Commodus coin with reverse representing a Bacchus-carrying Satyr with hare; this particular satyr hoists his hare ear-end-up, an arrangement still harder to process well, formally anyway:
http://www.coinarchives.com/a/lotviewer.php?LotID=22540&AucID=24&Lot=658
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What a wonderful coin (though Hadrianopolis, of course)! I began to recall modern-day boys stringing up hares and nutrias head down, but thought I'd better check the 7th century BC hunter-boy on the Chigi Olpe (attached). The hares don't seem to be head down. I do know that when you gut them and skin them you hang them scut-up and start there. I once had a neighbor who raised rabbits, and I watched men hang and butcher a cow with broken bones in Mani. I won't go into details, but that is the way it's done. Our little Early Archaic hunter (little: on the miniature frieze), however, has hares more rightside-up than not. Pat L.
The drawing is from its publication in Antike Denkmäler from the 1890s.
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A good opportunity to show my double die-matching specimen of that Commodus coin, kindly identified by Pat in earlier times. Coming from a lot I purchased when I started collecting provincials, so unfortunately, but not surprisingly, in poor condition. 18-19 mm, 3.70 g.
Lars
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It is worth noting how far the shifting descriptions of this unknown beauty from Marcianopolis have confounded its most recent cataloguers. Jochen's first posting (*) rightly begins with Pick's cautious but thorough description (AMNG 1/1 755), which the entry in Hristova-Jekov (6.24.5.2-3), "Demeter (Moesia?"), remarkably fails to cross-reference correctly even as it does cite Moushmov 548. Views regarding this same reverse figure become far more confused and confusing in Varbanov's English, citing both Pick and Moushmov in its earliest reference but then (mis?)devoting four entries and two photos (1265-67 and 1283) to the same reverse variously listed as Hope (Elpis) and a river-god with reed. In contrast to these two opposed ill-grounded guesses V. describes the analogous Nikopolis reverse (3479) much more carefully and helpfully as a "female figure seated on rock l., holding poppy in extended l. hand, r. hand resting on rock"; though Hope (Elpis) on coins generally holds a flower, not all women with flowers necessarily stand for Hope-Elpis -- just think of Persephone! It is useful to work to untangle such cruxes but disastrous to simplify things prematurely and gloss over an intricate case by selectively missing its tangles.
* https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=25011.0
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With apologies for returning to this topic some years later...
Regarding the Viminacium Bunny prices, if you are patient you can probably find one on Ebay within the next year that will sell for 50 to 75 bucks. Not cheap, but that is about as good as it gets. There is usualy about one each year that goes for that price, but you have to be thorough with your searches and lucky. The weakened dollar certainly hurts too, and is likely a major contributor to CNG's insane prices of late.
Oddly enough I bought a bunny Vim at a CNG auction about a year ago. It was misattributed and sold in a bulk lot. I spotted thier error and turned a small profit after I liquidated the lot (keeping the bunny coin of course). :) I also found one about 2 years ago on a dealer's private website. It was baddly corroded and barely attributable, but the seller had no idea what they had and sold it to me for 18 bucks. Not bad for a fully attributable bunny coin.
The bargains are out there for those willing to sink time into looking for them I reckon. But then again, it certainly has helped me that I specialize in Viminacium coins too!
Scott S.
I finally bought an example of this intriguing type. It's not beautiful - the obverse is badly corroded, and the reverse is only slightly better - but it was in an auction, cheap and misattributed, and went unsold. I picked it up afterwards. Neither dealers nor collectors seem to be particularly aware of this type yet.
Francis
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Gordian_guy wrote: "It is not Macrinus or Diadumenian, but a Sept Sev bronze."
Slokind wrote:"Unlisted! Gentianus! The earliest of all known, since Gentianus preceded Tertullus. A discovery like this is, IMO, important."
Below is a later one, struck under Gallus. Also quite rare...I think, with a bear springing r. toward a deer fleeing r..
PeteB
Hi folks,
I have one of these coins, with a deer running right (at right). I never knew that there is a bear on it too.
Meepzorp