Coinage of the Social War (91–88 BC)

Coinage of the Social War (91–88 BC)
Denarius
Laureate head of Italia left, Oscan retrograde legend right UILETIV [víteliú = Italia][1] Helmeted soldier standing front, head right, holding inverted spear, right foot on (Roman?) standard; left foot on uncertain object; recumbent bull to his right, Oscan "A" in exergue.
AR, 3,60 g

The family of Social War coinage include all the coins issued by the Italic allies of the Marsic confederation, Marsi, Peligni, Piceni, Vestini, Samnites, Frentani, Marrucini, and Lucani, during the Social War (91-88 BC), their last struggle for independence against the hegemony of Rome.

Inspired by the Roman denarius, their circulation (and, perhaps, their release) continued even after the conflict ended, contemporary and promiscuously with their republican models.

Contents

Issues

Types

They consist chiefly of silver coins of the weight of the contemporary Roman denarius, and they are thought to have been issued from the mints of Corfinium and Aesernia.

This coinage, without any doubt, belong to the crucial years of the revolt against Rome (90-89 BC), but coins of the same family may have struck until later, although there is no firm evidence of this. Certainly they circulated in parallel and promiscuously with the Roman denarii of the same weight,.[2] Furthermore, some isolated exemplar come from stratigraphic contexts much more recent than the insurrection against Rome.[2]

The unique gold stater

There is also in the Paris Collection a isolated gold stater of Attic weight, «beautifully preserved».[3] The unique known exemplar has a weight of 8.47 gr. (a b/w picture of this coin can be seen here. A drawing is in [1] ) and its first appearance dates back to 1827,[4] although Julius Friedländer reported 1930[5]:

  • Obverse: head of young Dionysos right, crowned with ivy wreath.
  • Reverse: Cista mystica adorned with three wreaths and with a wolf (or panther) skin on the top; thyrsos with ribbons; in exergue, Oscan retrograde legend mi.ieíis.mi, (a certain and otherwise unknown Minatius Jegius, Minatii f. (?)).

But the authenticity of this coin is disputed. The genuineness of the piece was supported by Julius Friedländer in his fundamental work about Oscan coinage[6] with a very strong argument based on the perfect accuracy of the legend when compared with the poor knowledge of the Oscan alphabet and language at the time the coin first appeared (in 1830, according to him, but, really, in 1827), that is, before the pioneering works of Klenze (1839),[7] Mommsen (1845)[8] and Lepsius (1841).[9] The coin, in particular, shows a perfect distinction between i and stressed í (the difference, in Oscan script, is the addiction of a little line[10]), a thinness that none was aware of before the work of Klenze.[10]

Unfavorable arguments come from Secondina Lorenza Cesano[11] and Alberto Campana, who, on the other hand, follows very closely Cesano reasoning.[12]

Iconography

Some of the iconographic themes were original, others were borrowed from the Roman coinage.

In any case, the borrowed themes acquired new meanings or resonances: thus, for example, the heads on the obverse was usually a personification of Italia depicted as a goddess with a helmet, which replaced the head of Rome, accompanied by a legend reproducing his name, ITALIA, in the Latin alphabet or VITELIU (víteliú = Italia) in Oscan alphabet[1] (there is a unique copy, actually in the de Blacas collection, known to report the double LVITELLIU [vítelliú]).[13]

Inscriptions

The inscriptions were partly in Oscan, partly in Latin characters, the pieces being struck by a central mint, with two different and synchronous issues, one for the Oscan-speaking and one for the Latin-speaking insurgents.

Legends often record the names of the chief leaders of the Revolt: Quintus Poppaedius Silo, Gaius Papius Mutilus, with his title Imperator, an unknown Numerius Lucius (?), and others.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b For the phonetic transcription from Oscan to Latin alphabet see, for example, this page or this one. Please note that, all the Oscan monetary legends are retrograde, as the one running clockwise on the copy reproduced in the margin
  2. ^ a b Alberto Campana, La monetazione degli insorti italici durante la Guerra Sociale (91-87 a.C.), p. 37
  3. ^ Robert Seymour Conway, The Italic Dialects, Cambridge University Press, 1897, P. 216
  4. ^ See the descriprion of the coin in Francesco De Dominicis, Repertorio numismatico: per conoscere qualunque moneta greca tanto urbica che dei re, e la loro respettiva stima, Tome II, p. 417, Tipografia di Mattia, Naples, 1827
  5. ^ Die oskischen Münzen, Lipsia, 1850, p. 73
  6. ^ Julius Friedländer, Die oskischen Münzen, Lipsia, 1850, pp. 73-75
  7. ^ Philologischen Abhandlungen von Clemens August Carl Klenze (1795–1838), dited by his friend Karl Lachmann, published posthumous in Berlin, 1839
  8. ^ Theodor Mommsen, Oskische Studien, Berlin, 1845
  9. ^ Karl Richard Lepsius, Inscriptiones Umbricae et Oscae, Leipzig, 1841
  10. ^ a b Karl Richard Lepsius, Inscriptiones Umbricae et Oscae, p. 142
  11. ^ Secondina Lorenza Cesano, Di Uranio Antonino e di altre falsificazioni (About Uranius Antoninus and other falsifications), in Rivista Italiana di Numismatica e Scienze Affini, pp. 35-69
  12. ^ Alberto Campana, La monetazione degli insorti italici durante la Guerra Sociale (91-87 a.C.) (The coinage of the Italic insurgents during the Social War (91-87 BC)), p. 135-138
  13. ^ Theodor Mommsen, Histoire de la monnaie romaine, (trad. by Louis de Blacas), Paris, 1865-1875, p. 531

Sources

External links

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