Читать книгу Urban Life and Local Politics in Roman Bithynia - Tonnes Bekker-Nielsen - Страница 16

The ancient world knew only one mass medium: coinage. The main purpose of early coin images and legends was to authenticate the origin, purity and quality of the coin itself, but from the late Republic onwards, Roman moneyers developed and exploited the propagandistic potential of coinage by combining short, abbreviated titles and slogans with images carrying powerful symbolic connotations.³¹ The imperial mints were large-scale operations producing coins in gold, silver and bronze, which circulated throughout the empire (with the exception of Egypt, which had its own mint in Alexandria and its own closed currency system).³²

Fig. 7. Left: Bronze coin of the Bithynian koinon, struck under Hadrian (AD 117-138); the reverse shows the facade of the imperial temple in Nikomedia. RGMG 1.2 Commune Bithyniae 44 (Münzen und Medaillen Deutschland). Right: Nikomedian bronze coin of Valerian, Gallienus and Valerian II (AD 256-258). The reverse shows a bird’s eye view of the Nikomedian temple precinct with an altar at its centre, flanked by three temples. In the central temple, the artist has omitted two columns, allowing us to see the cult statue inside. RGMG 1.3 Nikomedia 407 = SNG Aulock 860 (Classical Numismatic Group).

At a lower level, regions and cities also struck coins in bronze for local use (fig. 7). From the mid-first to the mid-second century AD, coins were struck in the name of the Bithynian koinon, and the cities of Bithynia continued to strike bronze coins until the mid-third century. Earlier scholars, such as Bosch (1935), assumed that local mints were small-scale counterparts of the large imperial mints, and that each city had its own permanent workshop and mint-master. This would imply the existence of hundreds of local mint workshops in Asia Minor. Since the work of Konrad Kraft (1972), however, it is accepted that most Asian cities had no mints of their own but were supplied from outside, and that at any given time, perhaps no more than a dozen mints were operating in Asia Minor.³³ Some of these were itinerant enterprises, moving from city to city in response to local demand.³⁴ Since the obverse die did not wear out as quickly as the reverse die, and as the obverse legend and image were not related to a specific city, a mint-master might sometimes use the same obverse die for coin series struck on behalf of different issuers. For instance, an obverse die of the emperor Gordian was used to strike coins for Nikaia, Nikomedia and Prusias ad Mare, with different reverse designs.³⁵

Like their imperial counterparts, the local moneyers used coinage as a medium to convey a message on behalf of the city or koinon responsible for the issue. Most city coins of Asia Minor follow the same format with a standard portrait of the emperor or another member of the ruling house on the obverse, which thus closely resembles the output of the imperial mints. On the reverse, there was scope for local variation and self-representation. The range of symbols, images and legends on coin reverses reveal how the city elite viewed themselves and their city, and what image they wanted to project. Furthermore, engravers often included depictions of monuments, especially temples, and coins thus provide important pointers to the topography and architectural history of individual cities.³⁶

Notes

1 Doonan 2004.

2 It.Ant. 139-143; It.Burd. 571-575.

3 For an attempt at reconstructing the road network of Bithynia et Pontus, see Marek 2003, map V.

4 On the authenticity of Brutus’ letters, see, most recently, Moles 1997.

5 Libanios travelled back and forth through Anatolia en route between his home-town Antioch and the capital; he also spent seven years of his life teaching ín Bithynia, first in Nikaia (342-344) then in Nikomedia (344-349). Unfortunately from our point of view, none of his letters prior to 350 have survived; Bradbury 2004, 73.

6 Gregory of Nyssa, Ep. 14, adapted from H.C. Ogle’s translation in NPNF.

7 E.g. in Fronto’s correspondence with Marcus Aurelius; also in some of Trajan’s letters to Pliny, cf. Ep. 10.18; 10.34; 10.44; 10.50; 10.66; 10.80; 10.93.

8 For a familiar example, cf. the openings of Pliny’s two letters to Tacitus about his uncle’s death, Ep. 6.16 and 6.20.

9 Sherwin-White 1966, 6-9, addresses the stylistic aspect of Pliny’s letter-openings, but devotes little attention to their function.

10 In Ep. 10.3a Pliny asks Trajan for permission to act as prosecutor of Marius Priscus in a case de repetundis, c. AD 100; the same case is mentioned in Ep. 2.11 and 2.12.

11 Ep. 10.51.

12 Compare Ep. 2.11, in which Pliny recounts how he has been pleading a case before the emperor and takes pains to emphasize the “interest” (studium), “attention” (cura) and “concern” (sollicitudo) shown him by Trajan, with Dion’s Or. 45.3, where he claims to enjoy the “interest” (spoudê) and “friendship” (philanthropia) of the same emperor.

13 Sherwin-White 1966, 557-558.

14 E.g., Ep. 2.11; 3.18.

15 Millar 1977, 114-115.

16 The corpus of eighty speeches known to us was established by the time of Photios, but in the version he used, the speeches were arranged in a different order, e.g. the Euboicus (Or. 7) was known to Photios as the 13th oration, and the “homonoia orations” (Or. 38-41) as nos. 21-24. On Photios as a source for the life and oeuvre of Dion, see Schamp 1987, 263-270; Hägg 1975, 160-183.

17 For a detailed discussion of the arrangement of Dion’s speeches, see Arnim 1891.

18 Compare, e.g., the lively to-and-fro of the assembly meeting recorded in P.Oxy. 2407 (late third century)

19 Well into the second century, municipal council proceedings were still taken down in note form and rendered in oratio obliqua, Coles 1966b.

20 IK 39.3; see also p. 103-104.

21 E.g., Or. 32.67 and 33.57.

22 They were certainly in place before the time of Photios, who gives the rubrics in more or less the same form that we find them in the mss. of the corpus; cf. Hägg 1975, 161.

23 Arnim 1891, 368-369

24 The normal order of speaking in Roman city councils, as in the senate, was according to seniority and the rank of one’s previous magistracies (Digest 50.3.1); as a recent arrival who had not held the archontate, Dion would not be among the first speakers of the day.

25 Or. 49; in 49.1-13, Dion provides a wide-ranging discussion of philosophical attitudes to the exercise of political power, with examples drawn from faraway places like Persia and Gaul; then in 49.14-15, he briefly states his reasons for declining the offer of an archontate. The contrast between the two sections is striking.

26 For a discussion of the nature and development of the honorific inscription as a genre, see Quass 1993, 29-35.

27 Ameling, IK 27 p. 17.

28 Fernoux 2004, 321, tab. 14.

29 Dölger 1927, 10-11; also 67-71. Some titles used in the fiscal administration of the fourth and fifth century, such as dioiketês, survived the feudalization of the Byzantine empire and remained in use as late as the twelfth century.

30 IKourion, 127-145.

31 Hannestad 1986, 21-27, 56-58.

32 For the Egyptian coinage see, most recently, Christiansen 2003.

33 Kraft 1972, 90.

34 Kraft 1972, 92-93.

35 Kraft 1972, Taf. 102, 38a-b.

36 Price and Trell 1977, 99-106; 201; 213; 215; Kraft 1935, 213-220.