An interesting discussion. Relates to several areas I have been thinking a lot about recently.
To summarize so far:
- There is
contemporary Roman iconographic evidence that "tongs" were used to hold the upper die at least some of the time.
- It would be safer for the
mint workers to use "tongs" as that would avoid the chance of a missed blow or glancing blow breaking the die wilder's
arm or hand. Though it would add another kind of danger, albeit one possibly less likely and less disastrous, that the die wielder looses grip of the die and/or the tong from the hammer blow - especially if the die was not held each time at its balance point.
- It would be faster to not use tongs.
Now to throw in a couple of ideas for discussion.
The reason I put tongs in quotes the first two times and not the other times is as follows. What if what we are seeing is not regular tongs but something that could be fixed more firmly to the upper die? Either tongs that could be locked into a closed position or a long
handle with a sleeve on the end that fit around the die. Either would be easy for the
Romans to make. Either of these would look like tongs in an image - for example the
tessera shows only a single line. But more importantly, either would serve to protect the die wielder while also saving on time and reducing the chance of the die breaking loose from the tong wielder's grip. Unlike with the blanks, the tongs don't have to release grip on the die during the entire striking operation.
I think that it is also important to remember
hinged dies, of which there is at least one example in evidence (though I can't recall if it was for genuine coins or a forger's product). These would also eliminate this issue. Once the hinged die was "closed" - that is the upper die placed over the blank - there was no need for anyone to hold it during the hammer blow. When these were used in slightly more modern times they
had a
spring mechanism in them which prevented the bounce strike.
Finally, I have been collecting stats about the force required to strike various sizes of coins and the force that can be created by various striking means. I will post some when I get a
bit more time. My main line of inquiry is about how many options really existed to strike large AE coins like the
sestertius. Especially given that they required much more force but show far fewer examples of mis-strikes than are found on much smaller AE coins.
SC