Roman Republican moneyers and their coins, 63 B.C.-49 B.C.

225 Pages·1995·116.081 MB·English

by  Harlan, Michael

ASPECTS OF ANCIENT CLASSICAL COINS
R O M AN
R E P U B L I C AN
M O N E Y E RS A ND
T H E IR C O I NS
6 3 B C - 4 9 BC
ASPECTS OF ANCIENT CLASSICAL COINS
ROMAN
REPUBLICAN
MONEYERS AND
THEIR COINS
63 BC - 49 BC
Michael Harlan
Seaby
B. T. Batsford Ltd
London
DEDICATION
To my wife Linda whose help and encouragement have led only to
improvements in my text.
© Michael Harlan
First published 1995
All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic,
recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the publishers.
British Library CIP information
is available for this book.
ISBN 1 85264 76729
Printed by
Butler and Tanner
Frome, Somerset
for the publishers
Seaby
an imprint of
B. T. Batsford Ltd
London W1H OAH.
CONTENTS
PREFACE v
INTRODUCTION vii
1 L. AEMILIUS LEPIDUS PAULLUS 63 BC 1
2 L.SCRIBONIUSLIBO 63 BC 11
3 L. ROSCIUS FABATUS 62 BC 18
4 M. PUPIUS PISO 61 BC 23
5 M. AEMILIUS LEPIDUS 61 BC 28
6 L. CASSIUS LONGINUS 60 BC 39
7 C. CALPURNIUS PISO FRUGI 59 BC 44
8 L. MANLIUS TORQUATUS 59 BC 49
9 Q. POMPEIUS RUFUS 58 BC 56
10 M. AEMILIUS SCAURUS 58 BC 66
11 P. PLAUTIUS HYPSAEUS 58 BC 73
12 C. MEMMIUS 57 BC 78
13 NONIUS SUFENAS 57 BC 85
14 C. CONSIDIUS NONIANUS 57 BC 91
CONTENTS
15 L. MARCIUS PHILIPPUS 56 BC 94
16 FAUSTUS CORNELIUS SULLA 55 BC 100
17 Cn. PLANCIUS 55 BC 111
18 A. PLAUTIUS 55 BC 115
19 P. LICINIUS CRASSUS 55 BC 119
20 Q.SERVILIUS CAEPIO BRUTUS 54 BC 126
21 P. FONTEIUS CAPITO 54 BC 134
22 L. VINICIUS 53 BC 140
23 Q. CASSIUS LONGINUS 53 BC 143
24 M. VALERIUS MESSALA 53 BC 151
25 C. SERVILIUS 52 BC 156
26 C. COELIUS CALDUS 51 BC 160
27 SERVIUS SULPICIUS 51 BC 167
28 Mn. ACILIUS 50 BC 171
29 P. CORNELIUS LENTULUS MARCELLINUS 49 BC 175
30 Q. SICINIUS 49 BC 182
APPENDIX 1 DATING 185
APPENDIX 2 THE ANCIENT SOURCES 187
INDEX 204
PREFACE
Roman Republican coinage as a whole certainly wins no accolades for
beauty, as do the fine pieces of the Greeks, but that was not the concern of
the Roman moneyers, who concentrated on the message which was to be
quickly conveyed through content, symbols, and inscriptions. The State
required of the mint magistrate that he convert bullion into coinage of the
proper silver content and weight, but apparently placed no major
restriction on what design each moneyer chose to stamp on the planchet.
This seems to be the major perk of the unpaid office of triumvir of the mint.
Unlike modern coinage, each year brought new types and new messages
from a different moneyer.
Once the coin was stamped with its design, it began its journey not only
into the world of commerce but also into the more nebulous realm of
interpretation. And so the coins continue to circulate even today over 2,000
years after the hammer struck the moneyer's design into the silver
planchet, passing now into the hands of dealers and collectors, no longer
spent, but treasured, and ever interpreted and reinterpreted by minds
more clouded by centuries of change, which have produced a world with
different values, religions with different gods, wars with different
weapons, travel in different vehicles.
How wide the gap has grown was brought home to me one day when I
was proudly showing a newly acquired coin to a relative. It was a denarius
of Sextus Pompeius Fostulus with a very fine and sharp design showing
the infant twins Romulus and Remus being suckled by the she-wolf, who
tenderly licked them like a nurturing mother. A very fine example of the
foundation myth of Rome! I asked her what she saw. 'A dog eating two
kids' was the response. Truly, the coins now reside in a world their makers
never imagined.
But we must remember that not even in ancient Rome did everyone
know everyone else and not every reference would be readily recognized
by all of a moneyer's contemporaries. The moneyer knew what he wanted
to say, but once the coin was placed into circulation the message became
subject to the interpretation of the one into whose hands it passed. The
moneyer hoped that he had designed a coin which succinctly and clearly
conveyed the message he had in mind. How well the message is
understood depends on the knowledge of the holder of the coin. The
moneyer is successful if the design leads one's thoughts where he wanted
them to go. The goal of scholarship is to recover, as far as possible, the
message that the moneyer intended to convey. To do this today we have
first to recover a great deal of background information, and then we must
allow ourselves to be led by the design, the symbols, and the inscriptions to
make associations that were relevant to the coin's own time period. Once
we have reached this point then we should ask ourselves why we have
been led here. Books which have dealt with Roman Republican coinage
thus far have taken too wide an overview of the coinage to assess
adequately individual issues in their full context. This book examines in
individual chapters thirty moneyers who minted between 63 BC and 49
BC, analysing their designs in the fuller context of their family history, their
own part in contemporary events, the customs of their own time, their
political and personal rivalries, and the moneyer's own aspirations.
NOTE
In the following chapters all dates given are BC, unless otherwise stated,
and the subject of each chapter is called a moneyer, whether he exercised
that function as a mint magistrate or as a senator under Senate decree. The
book is meant to be read without reference to the notes which contain only
source references and no further discussion of the material. When I use
die numbers, remember that Crawford's die estimates are only that,
estimates, and contested in many cases but they do show relative
quantities of the coins minted.
MICHAEL HARLAN
INTRODUCTION
In order to establish an historical context for interpretation of coins, it
should go without saying that proper dating is extremely important. But
Republican coins, unlike those of the Empire, have no indication of date on
the coin. The dating most widely accepted today comes from Michael
Crawford's two volume work Roman Republican Coinage, published in 1974,
which improved on E.A. Sydenham's The Coinage of the Roman Republic,
published in 1952. Sydenham substantially revised Grueber's dates
published in 1910 in Coins of the Roman Republic in the British Museum.
However, much of Grueber's work, which brought Count de Salis'
unpublished work into print, remains invaluable and Crawford's work is
so monumental that there is little chance of its being replaced soon, and his
dates, so widely accepted today, are used in all the catalogue references.
Originally it was not my intention to argue with Crawford's dating, but in
analysing the material it became apparent that a more accurate dating for
the years 63 to 49 was not only possible but demanded. Therefore, I have
set out the basic criteria that the evidence led me to follow in dating
individual issues. Readers will then be able to evaluate for themselves the
suggested changes to Crawford's dates.
Crawford arrived at his dates through a combination of hoard evidence,
stylistic comparison and prosopographical evidence. The least rewarding
of the three criteria is stylistic comparison, for, besides being subjective,
any die-cutter could reproduce a similar style years apart simply by
copying. I prefer not to use it at all. Hoard evidence too has its limitations.
A single hoard may tell us very little of itself, since we may not know when
it was deposited, when the last coin was added to the hoard, or any order
of the coins within the hoard, but the comparison of numerous hoards can
establish a table of relative dating. By careful study of the many hoards
known, Crawford established his framework and thus determined the
span of years into which the coins must fall.
Six years after Crawford published, a new hoard came to light with
evidence to suggest minor changes in his dating. A hoard of approximately
5,940 denarii was found at Mesagne in Calabria. Charles Hersh and Alan
Walker, who published the contents in ANSMN 29 (1984), felt the greatest
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INTRODUCTION
confidence that the hoard was intact. By Crawford's dating the latest coin
in the hoard was the joint issue by the curule aediles Scaurus and
Hypsaeus, whose coin minted in 58 is one of the few coins of the Republic
that can be dated with absolute certainty. If this issue is indeed the latest
coin of the hoard, then the Mesagne hoard is of the greatest significance for
it gives us an absolutely dated dividing line of 58 allowing us to say with
certainty that all the coins found in the hoard date to 58 or earlier; however,
we cannot be so absolute on the other side and say that all issues missing
from the hoard were minted in 58 or later.
None of the coins that Crawford had dated after 58 is found in the
hoard, so while we have greater confidence that those coins are indeed
later than 58, the hoard evidence can make no changes in the specific
dating of these coins. However, several issues that Crawford had dated
before 58 are missing from the hoard, which demands that we reconsider
their dating. There are thirty different denarii missing from the Mesagne
hoard minted by fifteen moneyers, assigned by Crawford to dates between
82 and 58. Hersh and Walker noted that scarce issues are frequently
missing from hoards, so in these cases their absence proves nothing, but
where a large issue is missing from a particularly large and well-
represented hoard such as Mesagne, its absence may be an indication that
it had not yet been minted. Hersh and Walker noted four major moneyers
whom Crawford had dated earlier than 58 and whose absence from the
hoard necessitated a rethinking of Crawford's dates. Most notable are the
two coins minted individually by Hypsaeus, previously dated to 60 prior
to his curule aedileship. With approximately forty reverse dies, each of
these issues is too large not to be represented in the hoard and I agree with
Hersh and Walker that the evidence demands a date after 58. Nonius
Sufenas' coin, dated by Crawford to 59, is also missing and it has over sixty
reverse dies so, on the same grounds, it too should be dated after 58. None
of ten different designs of the coins minted by Pomponius Musa, dated to
66, are found in the hoard. Hoard dating is the only possible way to date
Pomponius' coins, since he is unknown to history. But his coins are rare
in hoards. A single coin first appeared in the Ancona hoard, which
contained the coin by P. Crassus, dated to 55. For Hersh and Walker this
left a choice of 57 or 56 for Pomponius and they chose 56. Whichever year
they chose meant that Pomponius was the second mint magistrate to issue
coins in a year that already had fairly large amounts minted by the
moneyer already assigned to that year, in addition to the sc issues. I am not
so convinced that the date of Pomponius Musa must be moved to some
time after 58. The fact that he had the time to develop ten different die
types suggests to me that he was the primary moneyer of his year, and
the rarity of his coins in all hoards suggests that the total mintage was
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INTRODUCTION
small, giving us grounds for excusing their absence in the hoard. Although
the Mesagne hoard evidence was a compelling reason for Hersh and
Walker to move Pomponius' coins to a date after 58,1 cannot see room for
hitn in 56 or 57.1 prefer to leave him on the earlier side of the dividing
line of 58 and since the unknown moneyer adds nothing to the treatment of
the history of the years, 63 to 49,1 have chosen not to treat Pomponius in
this book.
The remaining missing moneyer is Plaetorius Cestianus, who minted
five different types of EX sc coins, separate from his CVR AED coins, and
none are in the hoard. Four of the types may be considered scarce with
fewer than seventeen reverse dies, but the fifth is a large issue with sixty
reverse dies noted, and its obverse design is similar to a coin minted by Q.
Cassius after 58. Since Cestianus' EX SC issues first appear in the Sustinenza
and Frauendorf hoards, Hersh and Walker dated the coins to 57. However,
I am reluctant to move the date of these coins so far away from the time
that Cestianus minted as curule aedile in 67. In all the other cases of sc
issues of the 50s the prosopographical evidence shows that all the
moneyers were in their thirties. By 57 Cestianus, if he was indeed the same
Cestianus who minted in 67, had already held the praetorship and would
have been aged 46 or older, which makes Cestianus appear as an anomaly
to me, if we move the coins' date that far forward. Their absence from the
Mesagne hoard is strong evidence for moving the date, but in Cestianus'
case the prosopographical evidence waves a red flag and where such
evidence is available I prefer to give it precedence and have chosen not to
treat Cestianus in this book. So then I have moved only two moneyers to
the other side of the dividing line of 58 given by the Mesagne hoard: the
two individual issues of Hypsaeus and the coin of Sufenas. Including
Scaurus and Hypsaeus, whose joint issue as curule aediles gave us the
certain date of 58, there are twenty-two moneyers whose dates fall between
the limit of 58 set by the hoard and 49, when the character of the coinage
changed, reflecting the emergency nature of the money minted to pay
troops for the civil war.
The order of minting of the coins contained in the Mesagne hoard
cannot be determined from the hoard alone, but the relative state of wear
can indicate which coins were minted most recently. Hersh and Walker
noted four moneyers whose coins were all in virtual mint state: Cassius
Longinus, Roscius Fabatus, Marcus Lepidus, and Gaius Piso Frugi. They
noted that these moneyers were all missing from the Licuriciu hoard
whose latest coin according to Crawford's dating was Aemilius Paullus'
coin of 62. If these four moneyers are each given a separate year, then
Aemilius Paullus' date must be pushed back to 63 and the prosopo
graphical evidence supports this date. Paullus shares an issue with
ix