Anna Accettola (University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA))
In 58 BCE, aedile Marcus Aemilius Scaurus minted a coin which named “Rex Aretas” and depicted him in a submissive posture. The image includes a camel standing in the background, confirming the foreign and exotic nature of King Aretas and his Nabataean Arabs (Figure 1). The intent of this iconography was to illustrate the victory of Pompey and Scaurus over the Nabataean King, Aretas III, during their campaigns in the Near East in the late 60s BCE. However, the supplicandus is absent, leaving viewers unclear as to whom Aretas is supplicating.
In recent years, arguments about the role of the absent supplicandus have tried to parse the iconographic power of submission to a missing victor (Levick 1982; Wallace-Hadrill; Levick 2001; Naiden). F.S. Naiden argues that the amount of “flattery or self-promotion” (47) visualized on a coin is inextricably linked to the role of the supplicandus in the image. Naiden goes on to say that the Aretas coin has a strength to it, because viewers could decide for themselves who should be honored as the supplicandus, likely Pompey or Scaurus or, perhaps, the Roman people as a whole. Naiden finishes the argument by attributing the absent supplicandus to the Republican Roman disapproval of living leaders acting in godly ways, particularly in official iconography.
While this may prove true, I argue that there is an additional pressing historical reason for the avoidance of a supplicandus on particular coins in the first century BCE. This image of supplication to an unknown victor is paralleled on several other coins of the period, including the Bacchius Iudaeus coin (Figure 2) and Augustus’ Parthian coin (Figure 3). In each of these cases, the so-called victory promoted on the coin is actually less military victory and more creative refashioning of a muddy political-military event. For example, Pompey claimed victory over Nabataea and included the kingdom in his third triumph (Diodor. 40.4; Plut., Pompey 45.1-2; Pliny, NH 7.97-99; Appian, Mith. 116-117), but even the most complete historical record of the period is silent on the details of any Roman victory in 63 BCE (Joseph. AJ 14.46-48; BJ 1.123-33; Hackl: 137). As a result, we may be able to say that any submission of Aretas to a Roman authority is more wishful thinking or exaggeration, than historical reality. In the same vein, Augustus’ Parthian campaign to retrieve the battle standards lost at Carrhae was not the dominating military victory that the coin would imply, but rather, successful political negotiation.
In the first century BCE, the absent supplicandus seems to be linked to less decisive or clear cut military victories. The Roman authorities still saw fit to claim the honor and prestige of these events, but had to minimize some traditional aspects of supplication for public consumption. As a result, these coins must be reanalyzed for their historical context, content, and credibility.
Figure 1: Reverse of Scaurus Coin – ANS 1944.100.2590
Figure 2: Reverse of Bacchius Iudaeus Coin - ANS 1937.158.634
Figure 3: Reverse of Parthian Coin - British Museum 1920,1102.1
