Imperial imagery on Roman provincial coins: prototypes and derivations
By Dario Calomino, Università di Roma
This paper follows one of the main research strands of the ERC RESP project (The Roman Emperor Seen from the Provinces – GA 101002763), which investigates how Roman emperors were represented on visual media in the provinces, from Augustus to Diocletian.
The Abduction of Persephone on Coin Types of the Eastern Roman Provinces
By Jane DeRose Evans, Temple University
A depiction of the Hades and his chariot, his arm wrapped around the waist of Persephone and she tries to throw herself out of the vehicle is seen repeatedly on the reverses of coins from the first century BCE to the mid-third century CE, from Macedonia to Egypt, Aoelis to Lydia. The dynamic iconography of the scene is known to us from a fourth-century BCE fresco in tomb in Vergina and a similarly-dated mosaic in in tomb in Amphipolis, although it first appears on coins from Nysa, in Lydia, three hundred years later.
Political and Cultural Continuity with Argead Prototypes in Early Hellenistic Royal Coinage
By Alexander Meuss, Universtität Mannheim
Continuity between the emerging Hellenistic monarchies and the Argead past is much debated in recent scholarship. With royal coins being our best source for the question, this paper argues for taking a broader view of Macedonian coining traditions. Though a formidable figure, Alexander did not excise everything that had come before him. In three case studies from respectively Egyptian, Asian and European contexts, I shall attempt to demonstrate two main points, namely
Prototypes, Copies, and Fakes: A case study of the Croton, Thourioi and the Italiote league
By Marc Philipp Wahl, Universität Wien
At the beginning of the 4th century BC, a series of coins was struck in Croton that inspired numerous copies in the Magna Grecia. The female deity on the obverse - commonly addressed as Hera Lacinia - was particularly popular in Campania. Among scholars, the use of this motif has been interpreted as the shared type of the Italiotic League (Rutter & Burnett; but Parise).
Coping with loss and confusion: copying old coins for a new identity
By Daniel Qin, University of Pennsylvania
This paper, provisionally investigates the phenomenon of copying numismatic types within the Hellenistic corpus of Alexandria Troas, a polis formed through a “forced” synoikism of eight existing settlements under Antigonos Monophthalmos. In particular, the project uses coinage types as a lens to better understand the identity formation process of this newly founded polis and the intra-city dynamics of such cities during the early years after their foundation.
The First Prototypes on Early Electrum Coinage: From Seemingly Random Emblems to an Iconographic Program
By Ute Wartenberg, American Numismatic Society
In this paper, I examine the difficult issue of the significance and meaning of the massive number of designs on the earliest coins. The corpus of images on early electrum coinage is famously obtuse. Some of the emblems appear to follow the rules of later ancient coin iconography, where images are closely associated with the authority that issues the coin: Athena and the owl belong to Athens, the turtle to Aegina, and so on.