This edited volume draws together the results of a conference exploring the ‘methodologies of reading images on coins while putting in the foreground the role of the “actors”’ (p. 11), namely the ‘issuer’ and subsequent ‘users’ of the coins. Consideration of these aspects has grown substantially in recent scholarship and adds vital depth to discussions on numismatic imagery. The 23 papers consider an impressive breadth of material and are accompanied by well-presented appendices. The articles are collated into sections focusing on broad methodological issues related to the study of imagery on coinage or into sections focusing on specific cases from Greek, Hellenistic, Punic, Republican and Roman imperial coinage. A final group of articles discusses imagery on coins and gems. The scope of this review only allows comment on a selection of the articles in this wide-ranging volume.
De Callataÿ’s introduction sets out a detailed discussion of the development of scholarship on iconography in numismatics and the recent resurgence of interest in it and its methodology (e.g. N.T. Elkins, S. Krmnicek [edd.], Art in the Round: New Approaches to Ancient Coin Iconography [2014]). De Callataÿ provides valuable background to the key issues engaged with throughout: the extent to which coins were intended to communicate with an audience and who chose the types, how types evolved over time and the reception of these images, including consideration of their relative comprehensibility and evidence for potential audience targeting (pp. 40–50).
M. Caccamo Caltabiano discusses the Lexicon Iconographicum Numismaticae Classicae et Mediae Aetatis (LIN) and its methodology. Her innovative methodology involves reading the iconography in a similar manner to verbal languages. In this ‘iconic grammar’ she distinguishes a common ‘denotative meaning’ for an image, which could then be supplemented by an object that adds ‘connotative meaning’ to it (p. 79). The LIN collates all coins on which a particular image features and seeks to reconstruct its ‘diatopy and diachrony, the definition of its meaning using an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach, aimed at the integrated and overall reconstruction of the cultural context of its use’ (p. 78). Caccamo Caltabiano's method considers the links between obverse and reverse, between principal and secondary imagery on the coin and any legends. She assesses the relative ‘communicative strength’ of an image by looking at aspects including the denominations that particular imagery features on and the ‘iconic system’ of types produced by a specific mint. These aspects are charted between the first appearance of the image on coinage and the end of the Middle Ages, allowing a detailed ‘history of the coin type’ to be constructed (p. 89).
M.B. Borba Florenzano's article on the representation of gods and god-like entities on Greek coinage proposes using an anthropological approach to identify ‘networks of meaning which correspond to identities … beyond the city-state’ (p. 100). She brings in a variety of examples from pre-historic cave paintings and Greek religion more generally as evidence of a desire to control an apotropaic energy present in an image (pp. 104–6). In this way, Borba Florenzano argues that ‘coins could not only work out the identification of a political power with a specific deity … but also could invoke an uncommon force, an energy, fix it, and make it work on behalf of the issuers and most certainly of the users’ (p. 106). Borba Florenzano contends that in addition to the imagery on Greek coinage, this apotropaic nature extended to the coins as physical objects (pp. 108–11). Borba Florenzano suggests that an awareness of this broad ‘repertoire of shared beliefs’ was vital for coinage issuers to connect with their users (p. 111).
The question of reconstructing the intention behind imagery on coinage recurs throughout. O.D. Hoover discusses this in relation to imitation coinage in the Seleucid empire. He raises the important point that the modern meaning of counterfeit stresses the maker's deceitful intent, which is impossible to discern from the limited hoard or find spot evidence available (p. 255). When official dies were used to produce imitative coinage, scholarship has traditionally presumed that mint workers were striking counterfeit issues for their own benefit or that the dies had been stolen (p. 256). Hoover offers two alternative intentions behind their production through a close discussion of examples from Seleucid coinage and comparisons with both ancient and modern examples. He suggests that they were either minted in cases of clear emergency before being culled from circulation (pp. 256–8) or were produced as acceptable substitutes in regions with too little coinage (pp. 258–63).
A. Destrooper-Georgiades focuses on potential meanings and audiences for coinage minted in Marion between the fifth and fourth centuries bce. She first considers a series minted by Sasmas, with legends written in a mixture of Cypriot-Greek and Phoenician script. Destrooper-Georgiades argues that their initial audience must have been the inhabitants of Marion, pointing to the small circulation area (p. 224). Her explanation for the use of both Cypriot-Greek and Phoenician situates Marion in the context of close trading connections with Phoenicians, evident in funerary archaeological contexts, if not in surviving epigraphy (p. 225). Destrooper-Georgiades suggests that these legends, evident across the denominations, targeted a dual audience present in Marion and hypothesises about their potential circumstances, which are now so challenging to reconstruct (pp. 226–7). In contrast, Destrooper-Georgiades notes that none of Sasmas’ successors in the late fifth century bce struck legends featuring Phoenician characters (p. 227). While Greek influences are evident in the obverse imagery, Destrooper-Georgiades suggests that the reverses continue to demonstrate a multiplicity of influences in their imagery and speculates about the potential causes that prompted this and the audience that received them (pp. 227–8). By the late fourth century, Destrooper-Georgiades identifies a further change, with Phoenician and Levantine elements disappearing completely from Marion's coinage (p. 229). Instead, she states that both the iconography and the legends appear to have turned towards a thoroughly Greek audience at both a localised and a broader level (pp. 229–31).
A. Meadows identifies a significant paradigmatic shift in Greek coinage in the second century bce towards a new communal identity, which was also apparent in other aspects of contemporary civic life. Meadows moves beyond previous scholarship's focus on typologies. In doing so, he discovers a shift towards ‘elaborate “portraits” of deities, full figure depictions, and concentration on specific local cult or association with the issuing city’ (p. 299). Meadows associates this with a broader contemporary shift in civic self-representation ‘observable in other areas such as the appearance of gods to groups of citizens, the development of cults and attendant festivals and … the requests for recognition of Asylia that frequently accompanied the announcement of such festivals on the international stage’ (p. 307). Meadows places this in the context of increasing civic competition although he is rightly reluctant to ‘reduce Greek religious expression to such entirely instrumental interpretation’ (p. 308). Meadows identifies parallel developments on contemporary Ptolemaic and Seleucid coinage (pp. 309–10), noting that ‘in a sense then we can describe the designers of the new civic coinage as being themselves the audience of royal coinage’ (p. 310).
B.E. Woytek examines the relationship between the messages presented on Roman Republican coinage and their contemporary users. When considering the question of audience perspective, Woytek notes that there has been a degree of ‘tacit assumption … that those responsible for the images on the coins believed them at least to be looked at (and perhaps also understood)’ (p. 367). Despite the lack of substantial contemporary literary testimony on the reception of Republican coinage, Woytek argues that nobody would deny that following the shift in denarius design in the late second century, considerable attention was given to coin design by moneyers (p. 369). Woytek considers coinage itself as alternative evidence for a close observation of Republican coin types by their audience, noting the reuse of Republican types on later Republican, Celtic and imperial coinage (pp. 369–70). Its contemporary reception is reliant on the ‘depth of knowledge’ of a viewer, which Woytek rightly highlights as having been difficult to pin down in scholarship (pp. 370–4). Woytek presents a study of Republican ‘imperatorial’ coinage to discern whether there is evidence for audience targeting in typological differences between these issues and those produced by the main mint in Rome (pp. 374–8). While Woytek demonstrates that Mark Antony's series has a strong focus on apposite military themes, Caesar's ‘imperatorial’ coinage is much more nuanced, with certain complex and abstract compositions serving as ‘a vehicle for Caesar's self-representation’ (p. 378).
J. van Heesch compares the variety of reverse imagery minted in the imperial mints at Rome and Lyons under Nero. He provides a clearer view of their overall minting programmes by simplifying the typology construction (p. 432). Van Heesch identifies a greater variety of imagery over a longer duration on the Neronian bronze coinage minted at Lyons compared to Rome (pp. 432–4). Van Heesch argues that this does not simply reflect greater mint activity in Lyons but instead demonstrates a certain awareness of local audience, exemplified in examples such as the ARA PACIS type (pp. 433–4). Van Heesch acknowledges the apparent contradiction between this typological diversity and the site finds from Gaul and the German provinces, which suggest that military themes predominated in actual circulation (pp. 434–5). However, van Heesch notes the lack of sestertii in this evidence. In his survey of the reverse types minted in Lyons and Rome, it was the sestertii that demonstrated the greatest variety where ‘three of the reverses are military in character, three are civilian, and two can be both military and civilian’ (p. 436). These reverses included references to the likes of the harbour of Ostia, the temple of Janus, the congiaria and the market hall of Nero, all ostensibly ‘Italian themes’ (p. 436). Van Heesch suggests that these images ‘propagated the “seduction of civilisation” in a world that was not yet fully Romanised’ (p. 436). Van Heesch discusses the question of where the impetus for these types came from specifically and sees it coming from Rome (p. 439). Van Heesch notes that it ‘would be interesting to map all the sestertii of Nero struck in Lyons, to verify whether certain types are more frequent in military sites and others more common in civilian settlements’ (p. 437). This would certainly be a valuable expansion on his initial conclusions.
The volume incorporates a rich variety of methodologies and evidence, with many of the articles engaging well with the other articles. The volume as a whole would have benefited from a final discussion piece to draw out the significant conclusions in relation to the key issues introduced at the outset. This would have complemented de Callataÿ’s introduction, which provides an excellent overview of these issues and delineates the significance of the conference well in terms of the progression of current scholarship. However, the ambitious scope of the volume situates it well as the ‘accélérateur’ (p. 50) that de Callataÿ wishes it to be for further dialogue and engagement with this topic.
