The crisis of 189 on Commodus' medallions of 1 January 190

[curtislclay]

In 189 AD, Rome was afflicted by a famine, which was blamed on the praetorian prefect Cleander, who was alleged to have purchased grain and hoarded it to profit from the rising prices.  A riot broke out during games in the Circus, and the mob marched to the palace in the suburbs where Commodus was residing.  Commodus took fright, had Cleander beheaded, and surrendered his corpse to the mob, who then stuck Cleander's head on a pole and carried it around the city!

An exceptional obverse legend and two remarkable reverse types on Commodus' next New Year's issue of bronze medallions, distributed on 1 January 190, seem to refer to the successful resolution of this crisis of 189.  Apparently Commodus had undertaken vows to Neptune for the safe and speedy arrival of grain ships from Egypt, and when these ships actually arrived, Commodus gratefully fulfilled his vows and the crisis was over!

One reverse type shows Commodus sacrificing at an altar before a statue of Neptune, with the legend P IO IMP OMNIA FELICIA P M TR P XV IMP VIII COS VI P P: "May everything turn out well for the dutiful emperor", or "Everything has turned out well for the dutiful emperor", followed by Commodus' titles of 190, including TR P XV which began on 10 Dec. 189 and the emperor's sixth consulship, which he assumed on 1 January 190.

The second type is undated, but was normally struck with the same exceptional obverse legend as the PIO IMP medallion, and the specimens of both types illustrated below even share the same obverse die: VOTIS FELICIBVS, "The Vows turned out well", Commodus and another figure sacrificing at a tripod altar in the harbor of Ostia, below them a slain bull and a patera, behind them a lighthouse, while two grain ships sail into the harbor, one of them piloted by Serapis, and two smaller ships row out to meet the grain ships.

Commodus' normal obverse legend in 190, which one would expect to appear on his medallions as well, was

M COMMODVS ANT P FELIX AVG BRIT,

but many of the medallions of 1 January 190 show a different legend,

IMP COMMODVS AVG PIVS FELIX,

which was apparently specifically designed to stress the qualities that got him through the crisis of 189, his devotion to duty (PIVS) and his good luck (FELIX).  The same words reappear in the legends of the two reverse types just described, PIO IMP OMNIA FELICIA and VOTIS FELICIBVS.

The imperial titles on medallions, as I have argued elsewhere in Forvm, prove beyond reasonable doubt that virtually all bronze medallions were manufactured each year in November and December, and then distributed as New Year's gifts on 1 January.  We can therefore assume that the medallions of 190 were issued on 1 January also, and this date of issue strongly confirms that the two reverse types in question, and the exceptional obverse legend, do in fact refer to the crisis of 189, the major event in the year just ended.  Another medallion type of the same issue confirms the 1 January date, since it shows Commodus crowned by Victory in a consular quadriga, commemorating his assumption of his sixth consulship on exactly that date, 1 January 190.  The example illustrated below shares its obverse die with the PIO IMP OMNIA FELICIA and VOTIS FELICIBVS medallions that I also illustrate.

[curtislclay]

A very fine bimetallic specimen of the VOTIS FELICIBVS medallion of Commodus was in the Lanz auction of the Leo Benz Collection in 1999, and was recently acquired by Beachcomber of the German Numismatic Forum, who showed it there.  It was the appearance of this new specimen that encouraged me to investigate what we know about the date and interpretation of the type!

Beachcomber's specimen, illustrated below, has a left-facing portrait die that shows not the special obverse legend of the medallions shown above, but an expanded version of the normal obverse legend of 190,

M COMMODVS ANTONINVS PIVS FELIX AVG BRIT.

The reverse die of Beachcomber's piece is also different from that of the Gnecchi Collection example shown above.

I know two other specimens of this medallion from the same obverse die as Beachcomber's example, but from a different, third, VOTIS FELICIBVS reverse die, namely one in the British Museum and the second in Paris, the bust type on the Paris coin having been altered from cuirassed only to draped and cuirassed by tooling.

Addendum, 10 July 2008:  I am adding below an image of a bimetallic BM specimen of this VOTIS FELICIBVS medallion with the special obv. legend, which happens to be from the SAME REV. DIE as Beachcomber's new example with the longer standard obv. legend.

[commodus]

Truly fascinating.

[Joe Sermarini]

Thanks Curtis for this post and posts like this.  Very interesting! 

[*Alex]

Yes, thanks from me too Curtis. I enjoyed reading your post it was very informative.

Alex.

[curtislclay]

You are welcome, friends!  I enjoy investigating and writing about numismatic questions myself, in order to clarify my thoughts about them!

Here, from a notecard I wrote several decades ago and my recent reconsultation of many of the same works, is a concise history of our knowledge of the VOTIS FELICIBVS type on the medallions of Commodus.

First publication, from a specimen in the Medici Collection, Florence, a brief description of the rev. type only, without interpretation: Vaillant's book on rare Roman bronze coins, 1674, p. 219.

First interpretation, based on a fine specimen in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire, Haym, The British Treasury II, London 1720, known to me through Khell's Latin translation of 1764, pp. 297-9 and pl. 36.8: according to Haym the type shows the undertaking of vows for the safe departure and journey of Commodus' new African grain fleet, whose establishment by Commodus to supplement the grain supply provided by the existing Egyptian grain fleet is mentioned in the Historia Augusta.  Haym failed to recognize the figure of Serapis piloting one of the ships, and did not identiify the man performing the sacrifice as the emperor.

Eckhel, Doctrina 7, 1796, p. 129; Heer, Der historische Wert der vita Commodi, 1901, p. 107; and Strack, Antoninus Pius, 1937, p. 159, all essentially followed Haym's interpretation: in their eyes the medallion depicted the launching and first voyage of Commodus' African grain fleet.  Even CNG still followed this interpretation in their commentary on Beachcomber's piece in their online store earlier this year.

Vogt, Die alexandrinischen Münzen, Stuttgart 1924, pp. 154-6, made great advances: he recognized Serapis steering one of the freighters, and accordingly identified it as an Egyptian grain ship; he saw that the freighters were ENTERING rather than leaving the harbor; he identified the harbor as that of Ostia; he saw that the PIO IMP OMNIA FELICIA type must be referring to the same event as the VOTIS FELICIBVS type, because of the shared theme, successful vows relating to the sea and ships, and because of their joint use of the special, shortened obv. legend for medallions of 190; and finally he correctly identified the event referred to as the relief of the famine which had led to the death of Cleander in 189!  In just one small respect Vogt still followed Haym: he thought that the second freighter, above the legend, might indeed represent the new AFRICAN grain fleet, which would thus also have contributed to the relief of the famine, and would of course have to have been founded before 189, since the medallion showed it already in action in that year.

Kaiser-Raiss, Münzprägung...des Commodus, Frankfurt 1980, p. 41, essentially followed Vogt, even quoting his conjecture that the second freighter might represent the new African grain fleet.  Like myself above, Kaiser-Raiss claimed to have observed a single short-legend medallion obv. die that was used for the three types VOTIS FELICIBVS, PIO IMP OMNIA FELICIA, and TR P XV Consular quadriga; but the PIO IMP medallion that she illustrates on pl. 21.5 is actually from a different obv. die than the illustrated pieces with the other two types, pl. 21. 1 and 3.

I too have essentially followed Vogt, except that I see no reason to identify the upper freighter as African rather than Egyptian!  New in my presentation are only

(1) the firm dating of the medallions of 190 to a New Year's issue, therefore designed and produced late in 189, increasing the likelihood that the odd obv. legend and the two rev. types in question indeed refer to the famine of 189.  That the imperial titles on medallions prove that most of them must have been New Year's issues was my own discovery, in my Oxford B.Litt. thesis of 1972. 

(2) Observation of a real die link between those two rev. types and the XV Quadriga type, though one of the links is so far dependent on Dardel's drawing of a medallion in Paris, rather than an actual photograph or plaster cast of the piece! 

(3)  I believe I am the first to suggest that not only the two rev. types in question, but also the strange and hitherto unexplained variant obv. legend on the medallions of 190, were meant to reflect Commodus' role in overcoming the famine of 189.

One complete miss, in my view:  A. Alföldi, in his book A Festival of Isis, Budapest 1937, pp. 48-9, thought that the VOTA PVBLICA Isis coins of the fourth century AD proved that by then the festival of launching the ship of Isis, marking the opening of the sea to travel and transport by ship, had strangely been moved back from March 5 to January 3 and had merged with the ceremony of public vows on that day.  According to Alföldi, the VOTIS FELICIBVS type of Commodus depicts not the arrival of grain freighters from Egypt and Africa, as Vogt thought, but instead the ceremony of the opening of the seas, presided over exceptionally by Serapis instead of Isis; and the vows mentioned in the legend must be the annual VOTA PVBLICA of 3 January 190! Conclusion: "The fusion of the imperial vows with the cult of Isis and Serapis then was already complete under Commodus."  I, like most other scholars, am totally not convinced.

[David Atherton]

I too would like to thank you Curtis for your valued insight concerning these medals.

I have always been intrigued by this episode in Commodus' reign and your notes are a wealth of additional information!

I wonder if there was a standard way different grain ships were depicted on coins or medals and if the subtle differences were understood by the Roman populace as a whole?

[curtislclay]

I have added to my second message above an image of a bimetallic BM specimen of this VOTIS FELICIBVS medallion with the special obv. legend, which happens to be from the SAME REV. DIE as Beachcomber's new example with the longer standard obv. legend!

Just for fun, I also show below another bimetallic BM specimen of the same medallion, which is I think the only surviving Roman "double" bronze medallion, a four-sestertius piece if you like, on a gigantic 55 mm. flan, weighing 123.44 grams, showing on the obv. the special legend

IMP COMMODVS - AVG PIVS FELIX,

combined with a FACING portrait, on which the actual facial features have unfortunately been sheared away!  I believe this is the only known facing portrait on a large Roman bronze medallion.

EDIT: Actually Gnecchi had another such oversize bimetallic medallion of Commodus, with an ordinary, right-facing portrait, and a figure leading a horse on the reverse: Gnecchi no. 177, pl. 89.9.  He comments that this and the BM piece, which he considers to be double medallions or four-sestertius pieces, are the only surviving bronze medallions in this module of any emperor.