AMERICAN JOURNAL OF NUMISMATICS 26 Second Series, continuing The American Numismatic Society Museum Notes THE AMERICAN NUMISMATIC SOCIETY NEW YORK 2014 © 2014 The American Numismatic Society ISSN: 1053-8356 ISBN 978-0-89722-336-2 Printed in China Contents Editorial Committee v Jonathan Kagan. Notes on the Coinage of Mende 1 Evangeline Markou, Andreas Charalambous and Vasiliki Kassianidou. pXRF Analysis of Cypriot Gold Coins of the Classical Period 33 Panagiotis P. Iossif. The Last Seleucids in Phoenicia: Juggling Civic and Royal Identity 61 Elizabeth Wolfram Thill. The Emperor in Action: Group Scenes in Trajanic Coins and Monumental Reliefs 89 Florian Haymann The Hadrianic Silver Coinage of Aegeae (Cilicia) 143 Jack Nurpetlian. Damascene Tetradrachms of Caracalla 187 Dario Calomino. Bilingual Coins of Severus Alexander in the Eastern Provinces 199 Saúl Roll-Vélez. The Pre-reform CONCORDIA MILITVM Antoniniani of Maximianus: Their Problematic Attribution and Their Role in Diocletian’s Reform of the Coinage 223 Daniela Williams. Digging in the Archives: A Late Roman Coin Assemblage from the Synagogue at Ancient Ostia (Italy) 245 François de Callataÿ. How Poor are Current Bibliometrics in the Humanities? Numismatic Literature as a Case Study 275 Michael Fedorov. Early Mediaeval Chachian Coins with Trident-Shaped Tamghas, and Some Others 317 Antonino Crisà. An Eighteenth-Century Sicilian Coin Hoard from the Termini-Cerda Railway Construction Site (Palermo, 1869) 339 Review Articles 363 American Journal of Numismatics Andrew R. Meadows Oliver D. Hoover Editor Managing Editor Editorial Committee John W. Adams John H. Kroll Boston, Massachusetts Oxford, England Jere L. Bacharach Eric P. Newman University of Washington St. Louis, Missouri Gilles Bransbourg Ira Rezak American Numismatic Society Stony Brook, New York Andrew Burnett Stephen K. Scher British Museum New York, New York Evridiki Georganteli Stuart D. Sears Harvard University Westport, Massachusetts Kenneth W. Harl Peter van Alfen Tulane University American Numismatic Society Paul T. Keyser Bernhard Weisser IBM T. J. Watson Research Center Münzkabinett John M. Kleeberg Staatliche Museen zu Berlin New York, New York AJN Second Series 26 (2014) pp. 89–142 © 2014 The American Numismatic Society The Emperor in Action: Group Scenes in Trajanic Coins and Monumental Reliefs Plates 11–29 Elizabeth Wolfram Thill* Under Trajan, over ten new group scene types were created for imperial coin- age. Significantly understudied, these new coin types were innovative in both composition and content, and represented a dramatic departure from tradi- tional coin reverse types, which typically featured at most two figures. The new designs depicted the emperor interacting directly with his subjects, civil- ian and military. In both composition and theme, the Trajanic coin reverses are similar to the group scenes on contemporaneous monumental reliefs. The group scenes on both sculpture and coins point to a key emphasis in the Tra- janic period on the relationship and interaction between the emperor and his subjects, and broaden our understanding of both the artistic innovations and official representation of the Trajanic regime. The reign of Trajan presents such a wealth of information that, even after centuries of study, important developments have gone unobserved, and connections within and between media still remain to be discovered. One development in the Trajanic period that has escaped extensive study is the drastic increase in imperial coin types depicting numerous anthropomorphic figures. Previous to Trajan, coin reverses featuring multi-figure scenes had been limited primarily to depictions of the occasional adlocutio, congiarium, or sacrifice. The reign of Trajan, in contrast, saw fourteen new types of scenes with four or more figures. These new coin types * Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis ([email protected]). 89 90 Elizabeth Wolfram Thill were innovative in terms of both composition and content, and represented a dramatic departure from traditional reverse types. Rather than using a single figure, such as a personification, to embody an abstract concept, the new “group scene” coins often depicted the emperor interacting directly with his subjects, both civilian and military. Many of these group scenes, such as the presentation of a foreign king before Trajan and his army, seem intended to represent (more or less accurately) concrete historical events. In both composition and theme, therefore, the Trajanic coin designs share many similarities with well-studied scenes in Trajanic monumental reliefs. Taken together, the group scenes on both sculpture and coins point to a key emphasis in the Trajanic period on the relationship and interaction between the emperor and his subjects. The numismatic group scenes thus broaden our understanding of both the artistic innovations of the Trajanic period and representations of the Trajanic regime. I. Introduction: Definitions and Methodology The goals of this article are twofold: (a) to present a definitive exposition of Trajan- ic group scenes in imperial coinage; and (b) to investigate the significance and re- lationship of these scenes to contemporary monumental reliefs. Following a brief methodological discussion, I first present an exploration of the compositional in- novations of group scenes, through a description and preliminary discussion of the individual designs. I then explore the thematic innovations of group scenes, and the relationship between numismatic group scenes and Trajanic reliefs. I.1. Group Scenes “Group scenes” are defined in this article as compositions that include four or more anthropomorphic figures. Most imperial numismatic designs featured only one or two figures.1 In the initial stages of this study, I selected three figures per scene as my defining criterion. While designs with three figures were in fact rela- tively infrequent, the resulting subset of coins was not sufficiently distinctive for clear analysis. Narrowing the range to four figures, however, resulted in a distinct and significant subset of imperial coin designs focused on historicizing scenes. One interesting aspect of Trajanic group scenes on coins is that they frequently refer to specific historical events or programs. The legends of the coins may specify to which particular historical event they refer (for example Trajan’s seventh, eighth or ninth imperatorial acclamation).2 Some of the representations of these events are purely symbolic, such as the alimenta type showing Trajan with a female and two children.3 Others take the form of historicizing vignettes, designs that give the impression of depicting an actual, specific historical event. 1 Anthropomorphic figures can comprise deities, personifications, and adult and child human figures on any scale. 2 MIR 497, 548, 549. 3 MIR 357, 358, 447. The Emperor in Action 91 This is not to say that these numismatic representations were meant to act as believable snapshots of the events they commemorated, or that they necessar- ily incorporated any particular historical details. Just as scenes in sculpted reliefs presented an ideal, not a documentary, of imperial behavior, the numismatic vi- gnettes were carefully contrived compositions that may have had only tenuous connections to history. The representation of these events is often abstracted and simplified, and can feature personifications or deities, albeit rarely. It is not even necessary to assume that the events commemorated in historicizing vignettes ever occurred as discrete proceedings. What connects the designs in question is a compositional choice: to memorialize an event by depicting it as an interaction of numerous human actors, often with realistic details.Circus Maximus coins (MIR 182) that include an abstract personification of the circus also include concrete details such as a cheering crowd, the imperial podium, and metae. The use of historicizing vignettes can be contrasted with more common mythological or symbolic coin types, which allude to events but do not represent them directly. For example, some Iudaea Capta coins of Vespasian (e.g. BMC 532) show a captive, downtrodden female representing Judaea, but do not actually show the capture of Jerusalem. Similarly, coins commemorating the dedication of a temple typically show the temple without any illustration of its actual dedication (e.g. Vespasian’s dedication of the Capitoline temple; BMC 721). Trajanic group scenes, on the other hand, often seem to present the commemorated event in a more literal manner. This warrants specific study. I.2. Methodology This article is founded on a systematic examination of coin types minted in Rome under the reign of Trajan. This examination draws on B. Woytek’s authoritative systematic work on Trajanic coinage, Die Reichsprägung des Kaisers Traianus (98– 117) in the Moneta Imperii Romani series (Woytek 2010). All typological distinc- tions and chronologies for Trajanic coinage presented in this paper are derived from Woytek’s volumes. This article compares imagery on Trajanic coinage and monumental reliefs,4 the two major media associated with the emperor and designed for a broad pub- lic audience. In making comparisons between imperial coinage and monumental reliefs, one must be careful to avoid several theoretical pitfalls. The first involves preservation. Coins were mass produced and have survived in large numbers, to such an extent that scholars can be plausibly certain that what survives in the ar- chaeological record is a reasonable