First, I repeat a technical note from the date of posting the web page. Where my font said that all the omegas are
the server
software supplied English W, the most potentially misleading of all the crazy substitutions (and the Picasa servers, reportedly running on Linux/Unix, have lots more crazy substitutions).
Second, I add another Prusa coin, which a kind
Forvm member found for me, now in my Picasa
album of larger images for the Sauroktonos page:
http://picasaweb.google.com/slokind/SaurCoins#5367447131324056658The
Waddington Prusa coin is, as
Britannicus said, no.
9 on my web page, at the address he gives, and (since it from an outside source) I illustrate it only there, not in the Picasa
album where the new coin can be found.
Third, I did emphasize that the web page is only the numismatic evidence for the coins properly considered as Sauroktonoi. The tangled mess of art historical literature has no place in a web page meant only to be helpful to numismatists and collectors of coins.
Fourth, I do understand that reading a language not one's own requires closer attention. But Mr. Corso paid no attention, I think, to what I actually wrote. And he did not even cite
AMNG IV for
Domitian (which shows the figure from a different angle but is nonetheless, I agree with
Britannicus, not an
Eros but, as
von Fritze said, ibid., p 70, no. 210, Taf. IV, 10, an
Apollo), let alone the obvious Sauroktonos-
like pose of the
Nerva coin, of which I illustrated a photo in the essay under
Pastiches at the end of my web page. Corso seems unaware, indeed, of the array of
Apollo types even in century-old plates in
AMNG IV, that
Apollonia Rhyndacum displayed. I do, however, take great pains to read
Italian very exactly, just as if it were Greek or Latin or
German, for example, and I do not pretend to be able to read Polish or Hungarian.
Fifth, here is the key paragraph that seems to have offended him. I didn't mean to be un-nice, but only as brief as possible, and I chose words exceedingly carefully ("blithe", for instance). I have added numbers to facilitate addressing Mr. Corso's problems.
••
Apollonia Rhyndacum
had, and at a date earlier than
1 any of the Sauroktonos coins (i.e., the early 140s AD, dated by
Zeno), its own ‘original’ version, its own leaning-pose pastiche, of the
Apollo shown on their coins.
2Just so much
3 of the other half of my inquiry, the questions surrounding the related statuary, must be mentioned here. Study the beautiful Praxitèle
catalogue closely. Martinez, p. 52, says that the
Apollonia coins have been wrongly, abusivement, called Sauroktonoi, but includes the
Faustina of
Philippopolis 4, to which the same objections apply, among the Sauroktonoi; getting rid of old lists is not easy. Notice, too, that Pasquier and Martinez have refused to name Sauroktonos, abusivement, the
London Apollonia for
Lucius Verus, ibid., p. 209, fig. 127, and rightly take to task Corso’s blithe erection of an hypothesis on an admitted error
5. I do doubt that Praxiteles went on from Parion
6 to make, himself, a variant leaning
Apollo for
Apollonia Rhyndacum. Likewise, I would not make a single Antonine coin, 9, into a claim
7 for Prusa ad Olympum. The life-size replicas of the Sauroktonos are from
Greece and
Rome. But even to say that much
8 is to stray into the other half of this study.
This is very time consuming, but I want to be helpful and I do not want to be unnecessarily misunderstood (I do not care if he spells my name in the alternative fashion, though care to copy accurately is not unimportant). Let's all read carefully, including in our own languages.
1 As my opening paragraph on the page makes plain, this numismatic page addresses only the coins that I can regard as intended to refer to the Sauroktonos
type, and the earliest of THEM is Zeno's.
2 I should think it is plain, throughout, that I leave aside the
Apollonia Ryndacum coins because the range of Apollos on that city's coins are evidence (primary evidence) that the city used allusive poses, not "copies", and so made Apollos that they could regard as their own (having different ideas of "originality" from ours--and on this see the other web page, though it is
still very roughly written, called Their Inherited Images. But perhaps Mr. Corso did not reflect on that range on pls. IV and V in
AMNG IV.
3 Including "just so much" of the art historical business on a
numismatics page is NOT an open invitation to engage in flaming me along with Martinez who is, apparently, the one that Mr. Corso is really annoyed with.
4 I made quite clear (and have done so also in threads here that Mr. Corso can consult using
Search) that, but for the "true" Sauroktonoi, my nos. 4 and 5, showing that the
Philippopolis ones
do need to be considered along with the Antonine Nicopolis ones (and no. 4 may well be itself, like no. 1 at Nicopolis, a
Zeno coin), the
Faustina II coins (my no. 6) at
Philippopolis would arguably not have a place in a list of Sauroktonoi as such.
5 "admitted errors": This abbreviated statement concerns a number of cross-referenced statements in the essays in the Louvre
catalogue, to which here I can only refer you. May it suffice to say that Mssrs. Martinez and Corso do not unreservedly admire each others' writings?
6 Even here I was at pains to say that we do not know much
at all about Praxiteles' life or procedures, except to agree that he probably did NOT
work on the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos. In the longer, half art historical, article that I am
still working over, I stood firmly against any arguments as to what he did or did not do, where he did or did not go. I hardly need say that such arguments, concerning the Parion
Eros, have no place on a carefully focused web page about a certain iconographic
type at Balkan mints in the Antonine and
Severan periods. Strictly informally, I will admit that I suspect that the use of the Sauroktonos was due to its being a very young god doing a child's version of something heroic, rather as at
Rome the infant
Herakles strangling the
snake threatening him and
his little brother was used, with an infant
Caracalla head on it, to suggest something superhuman about the baby heir.
But I can't prove that, and neither can a whole lot of other stuff be proven.7 Here I merely repeated that the Prusa coins do not mean that Prusa, either, owned the Sauroktonos. Alas, we really have no idea where it stood, or for how long before being taken, perhaps, elsewhere. As I said above, the second Prusa coin, the last added to my Picasa
album (link above), only adds to the puzzle. It has a
column rather than a tree. THE FOCUS OF MY WEB PAGE IS THE ONES THAT QUITE CERTAINLY DO CONSTITUTE A MEANINGFUL SEQUENCE, EVEN THOUGH WE CANNOT KNOW HOW IT HAPPENED OR EXACTLY WHY.
8 Again, a statement that the coin list is only a
part of a larger study.
Patricia Lawrence (slokind)
