A
type which has long fascinated me, because of its
rarity and because one doesn't expect to find genre scenes on
Roman imperial coins! What was the purpose behind the
choice of this
type and the simultaneous Sow and three piglets
type on
denarii of
Vespasian and
Titus? The only other
type of this
IMP XIX / XIII issue was
Modius filled with wheat ears and poppies, struck for
Vesp. only, not
Titus.
A lot of Vespasian's
denarius types copied old
Republican and early imperial
rev. types, I think because
Vespasian was actively withdrawing these old coins, and melting them down and restriking them in order to profit from Nero's debasement of the
aureus and
denarius in 64. But neither the Goatherd milking
goat nor the Sow and three piglets
type had occurred on any earlier
Roman coin.
Apparently Goatherd milking
goat was a
standard type in ancient art, for a very similar
type appeared on later
provincial coins of
Cyzicus, for example
SNG Aulock 7377 of
Julia Domna. There the scene faces right rather than left; the
goat turns back her
head to look at the goatherd; she has short, slightly curving horns and (apparently) a beard, which I suppose would make her definitely a
goat rather than a
sheep; and there is a tree behind the goatherd whose branches extend over the scene.
The Aulock
SNG cites Imhoof-Keller, Tier- und Pflanzenbilder, 1899, p. 18. Unfortunately a
work that is not in my
library; I wonder if the authors make any useful comments about the
type!
The first time I became aware of this
type may have been when such a
denarius of
Vespasian, in worn condition but with unpublished left-facing
portrait on the
obverse, appeared in Glendining's Bob Arnold sale of
Roman denarii in 1969. If memory serves I bought the coin, then sold it to
Oxford with the rest of my pre-193
collection around 1990, and that identical specimen is now illustrated in the new
RIC, pl. 12, 979!
