Vv THE MAIN ASPECTS OF POLITICAL PROPAGANDA ON THE COINAGE OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC! By ANDREW ALFOLDI HE rabidly self-assertive trend in political competition among the Roman nobles had already provoked from remote times the deliberate exhibition of individual merit as a justification in electoral or other political processes. Such exhibition, to our eyes, has the air of shameless boasting, but seen in the light of Roman ideas it may sometimes reflect a true grandeur and a mighty conception. The visual proof of one’s own efficiency through the means of art, the vocal persuasion of the general public, the tendentious presenta~ tion of publicity through pamphlets, all these have a quite modern touch. This propagandist activity permeated the coin-types in the first century B.c, intensively. But the ability of the Romans to reflect political and social ideas in the tiny and highly simplified representa- tions of the coins had manifested itself from the very beginning.? This was due to the highly visual and dramatic character of Roman thought. A short reminder of the great role of allegory in the official acts in Rome must suffice. After a feud between the patricians and the plebs a sanctuary for Concordia was vowed; on the occasion of trials and achievements of a different kind Honos, Virtus, and other abstract personifications of an appropriate kind were honoured. The place where the senate held its meetings was chosen in a similar way: legations of foreign peoples without a treaty with Rome were ad- mitted in the Temple of Bellona, where the reward of a triumph to 1 An asterisk in the text means that the special point will be discussed elsewhere. Numbers in brackets refer, unless otherwise specified, to the plates of BMCRR. 2 An introduction to the problems of propaganda by means of art may be found in H. Jucker, Vom Verhdlinis der Romer zum bildenden Kunst der Griechen, Zurich, 1950.6, THE MAIN ASPECTS OF POLITICAL PROPAGANDA ON victorious generals was also discussed; after the restoration of internal peace the patres congregated in the aedes Concordiae. The treaties with foreign peoples were deposited in the temple of Fides. Cybele, fetched from Pessinus to bring the victory to the Romans against Hannibal, was first harboured in the temple of Victory. Clodius con- secrated the atrium Libertatis on the site of the destroyed house of his enemy. The personification of abstractideasis, of course, not a Roman invention. The Greeks, however, employed such symbolic concep- tions and figures as the quintessence of sublime ideas, raising them to the majestic height of heaven above the level of everyday life. For the Romans, the allegorical figures of this kind served above all to illustrate political aims and catchwords amidst the struggle for self-assertion in the forum and the curia. It is not the result of special ability in Cicero if he dramatizes events and situations as allegorical compositions of painting and sculpture: he simply makes splendid use of the visionary imagination of his audience, prepared. for and accustomed to this sort of fiction. The authority of the senate orders him to return from exile; the Roman people calls him back; the state implores him to come again; Roma herself welcomes him, joining him before the gates, and embraces him on his arrival; the whole of Italy has brought him back on her shoulders. The imagery employed is, for the Roman, no pale means of expression, but the dramatic actualiza~ tion of a visual way of thinking. Not only elaborate artistic com- positions, but also isolated figures and simplified symbols sufficed to invoke the illusion of tense actions. A good many of our coin-types are fragments of this procedure—miniature fragments, indeed, but authentic and immediate witnesses of the ideology and the trends of Roman politics, born in the very centre of the political life of the Republic. I The hundreds of Republican coin-types, well defined and often exactly dated, would in any case be of high value for the knowledge of political propaganda, if only as a means of filling the lacunae left in the other sources, But, over and above this, the uninterrupted series of heads and pictorial reliefs on the coins gives us a unique opportunity of following up the transformation of the conception of state and the actual relationship of this conception to the clans andTHE COINAGE OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 65 factions of the aristocracy, as well as to the leading figures of every epoch, against the background of continuous change in the last three centuries of the Republic. If this great possibility has been hitherto not fully exploited, this omission is due only to the erroneous chronology originally attached to the initial phase of this coinage. This obstacle was removed by the magnificent discovery of H. Mattingly and E. S. G. Robinson in 1932 concerning the date of the Roman denarius and other landmarks of the early coinage, followed up by a series of important studies of Harold Mattingly up to the present day. His results have been confirmed in a decisive manner by C. A. Hersh (NC 1953, pp. 33 ff), and all further discussion, on this topic becomes superfluous. ‘The historical transformation of the structure of the Roman state, as reflected by the unceasing change of the character of the coin-types, has, roughly, three stages, which approximately correspond to the three centuries of the later Roman Republic. In the third century 3.c. the coin-pictures announce aims and ideas concerning all the Romans and their state; above all they speak to the Greeks of Magna Graecia and they use for that purpose allegorical conceptions drawn partly from the Greeks themselves. In the second century the aspirations of the ruling class begin to overshadow the manifestations of the state and to supplant them by the continually gtowing references to their own clans. The badges of the princely families and the names of their descendants appear first in a modestly abbreviated manner, then in a fuller form, successively pushing the representation of the res publica and the name of Roma itself more and more into the background. At the beginning of the first century the symbols of the state to a great extent disappear. The era of the great oligarchies gives place to that of the powerful individuals who occupy first the reverse and then the obverse of the coins, gaining ground continually until the final success about the middle of the first century. The monotonous inventory of the early denarii had continually mirrored the discipline of the conservative nobility. The initially unspectacular growth of special types, which ended in a complete break-through of individualism and in new creations every year, illustrates the disruption of all the ties of the republican state. The early types addressed the outer world, the denarii are turned homewards; 738 F66 THE MAIN ASPECTS OF POLITICAL PROPAGANDA ON yet they had at first no regard to the aspirations and the mentality of the common people. Bat the political revolution enforced this atti- tude upon the monetales; at the very end this captatio benevolentiae had been extended to the soldiers and veterans too. In the first phase of the Roman coinage the actuality of day-to-day politics is missing: timeless values and conceptions are predominant, In the second century the imprint of contemporaneous events is still lacking, but the past intrudes—the past of the big families, with the purpose of presenting their offspring in the brilliant light of the great achievements of their forerunners. Finally, in the first century B.c. famous ancestors yield their place one after another to their living descendants; with the latter the reality of contemporary events breaks in. The hieratic uniformity of the first phase, much longer pre- served on the bronze denominations than on the silver, characterizes the firmly coherent structure of the state, which was still able to subordinate all its members to the whole. The second period is characterized by the infiltration of the badges and monograms of the governing gerites, which after a long struggle replace the signs and symbols of the sovereignty of the state, From Sulla onwards there appear sometimes also the names of generals with extended powers, besides that of the young overseer of the moneta, and, from the last years. of Caesar onwards, the names of the sons of Pompeius, of, Caesar, of Brutus and Cassius, of Antonius and Octavian show us how the highest executive power usurps the organs of the administra- tion in the progression towards monarchy. The changed conceptions of the second century were not able to remove the head of Roma from the obverses of the denarii. But the reverses abandon the gods of the state, replacing them first with the heavenly patrons of the governing clans and later with scenes illus- trating their pride and glory. With the first century, however, the head of Roma disappears suddenly from the obverses, to cede her place to the tutelary deities of the aristocracy and other abstract per- sonifications, until famousancestors and, after Pharsalos, living leaders in turn replace the Olympians. In the same period the reverses follow the same line of development towards the glorification of the party leader. The manifestation of the will to power by individual states- men and generals must not be isolated from the manifestation of theTHE COINAGE OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC oo same will by the conservative politicians. The collective aspiration to power was not less unrepublican than the individual one. This funda- mental transformation will be exemplified by some selected cases in the brief sketch which follows. II At the moment when the first silver coinage of Rome was put into circulation, the Romans had fixed their eyes on Sicily and were pre- paring the great struggle with the Carthaginians for the possession of that rich isle. These facts determined the general outlook of the first emissions. Greek artists cut the dies; their dies represented gods who likewise were Greek, such as Heracles (Pl. 74, no. 9), Mars (Pl. 74, no. 1), and Apollo (Pl. 74, nos. 7-8); Nike appears (Pl. 74, nos. 10- 11) with the Greek agonistic symbols of the wreath, palm branch, and the ribbon. of the victorious athlete. Two generations later the early annalists of Rome still wrote in Greek and for the Greeks: from 268 onward the same phenomenon prevailed on the coins. To show that they belong to the same sphere of culture as the Greeks, the Romans put on these coins the lovely head of Ilia, ic. of the Trojan ancestress of their race. For the young woman with the Asiatic helmet is not the personification of Roma—this did not yet exist in Rome itself—and she is not Bellona, the ancient warlike goddess, because she was only later identified with the oriental war-goddess Mah. And the Trojan descent is not a later Greek fiction, but the heritage of the Etruscans, who posed in their struggle for the hege- mony of southern Italy as the Trojan antagonists of the Greeks of Homer.* Consequently we find the head of Ilia also on the heavy libral asses intended for the commerce of Middle Italy. In spite of this Greek mise en scéne, these silver coins were inscribed in Roman letters. Moreover, the pictorial types forcibly emphasize the national character: the she-wolf with the twins is no Greek literary fiction, but an old and original Roman tradition* (Pl. 74, no. 9). Even if the horse-head (Pl. 74, nos. 1, 3-6) may have been imitated from the Carthaginian coins, it had in any case its own significance in Rome and stood for the invincible cavalry of the Roman nobles.* During the first Punic war the series of types of the heavy cast 1 CEA. Alftldi, Der frihrimische Reiteradel, Baden-Baden, 1952.6s THE MAIN ASPECTS OF POLITICAL PROPAGANDA ON bronze coins acquired its definite shape. All of them show the prora, a hint of the vital struggles of the Romans in those years towards sea power. With the prow are coupled the most venerable deities of the Roman state, in the order in which we find them in archaic formulae of prayers, beginning with Janus. Apart from Janus, these gods had the names of the Olympians, but they had not much in common with them. It has been shown of the Roman Jupiter! that he was totally divested of the all too human nature of the passionate Zeus; freed from the frivolous weaknesses imputed to him by the myth of the Greeks he became the abstract king of the young Roman community. The same juridical and political conception may have prevailed also in the case of the other deities on the bronze denominations: as majestic patrons of the res publica they evoked solemn feelings in spite of their rough execution and the complete lack of Greek beauty. After the first victory over Carthage the silver coins—as well as the scanty gold emissions—show a double head with two young male faces, crowned with the laurel wreath (Pl. 74, nos. 21 ff). Their prominent role shows that the two profiles must represent a concep- tion of central importance. It is impossible, therefore, to think either of Fontus, an unimportant double (and son) of Janus, or of a two- fold Mercurius, for whom the laurel wreath has no significance; a petasus, a caduceus, or a wing would certainly have not been lacking if he had been meant. Nor could the two war-gods of Rome, Mars and Quirinus, be reproduced in an identical manner: they had their own peculiar iconography. No important deity can consequently be iden- tified with the two faces of this head, but only Romulus and Remus. ‘These two young heroes and founders of Rome are not late borrow- ings from the Greeks; their myth came from the common cultural roots of the Eurasian shepherd-peoples, a myth which can be traced from Middle Europe to the Far East. The annual festival of the Roman kings, the Lupercalia,* shows, even in. the historical epoch, the two groups of the secret society which once accompanied the double kingship, in common sacred action; the double organization of the primitive Rome did not only survive in the two war-gods on Palatine and Quirinal, and not only in their respective priesthoods (as the two, groups of the Salii), but shows traces of the transition from the ¥ ©. Koch, Der rimische Juppiter, Frankfurt, 1937.THE COINAGE OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 69 bipartite warrior-state to the more settled conditions of the historical period. As Mommsen observed, an archive for treaties with foreign peoples existed not only close to the Capitol in the temple of Fides, but also near the Capitolium vetus on the Quirinal, where the temple of Dius Fidius (a male version of Fides) housed corresponding documents. The bipartition being so well established, we can seek the origin of the double magistracy in those remote antecedents, and also suppose that in the third century 8.c. the threads which lead back to Romulus, and Remus (who faded away later), were still well known to everyone. The reverse accompanying the double head of the founders of the double organization of the pre-Etruscan Rome shows Juppiter optimus maximus in his war-chariot drawn by four white horses, the author of the auspicia of their rule. A peculiar bronzeseries (PL 75, nos. 8-11 and 13)! produced during the war with Hannibal leads us still farther back in the Roman past, to the most archaic layer of Roman religious ideas. To explain away the difficulties of interpretation by taking the unfamiliar types in question as imitations of coin-types of other Italic communities is inadmissible. First of all, to do this would mean they were meaning- less for the Romans. Secondly, the boar-skin as the headgear of a young hero or god, and the bull with the snake and corn-ear (PI. 75, nos. 9 and 13), are not unknown in the oldest religious traditions of Rome. The standards of the Roman army before Marius— authentic witnesses of prehistoric beliefs—had on their top, besides the cagle (Juppiter), not only the wolf (Mars) and the horse (Neptunus), but also the boar and ‘Minotaurus’. The latter is the well-known demon of fertility, the special Roman version of which, presumably Liber pater, can be no surprise for us;* for the boar, the only solu- tion seems to me to be his identification with Quirinus. The bird of prey with a flower in its beak can hardly be isolated from the bird with a fruit, a very popular representation on Roman engraved gems; as this bird is coupled with the obverse of the she-wolf with the twins (PI. 75, no. 10), it may be the helpful bird of that myth. The principal type of this series is a warlike Juno (PL 75, no. 8), some « "The overstrikes identified by C. A. Hersh, NC 1953, p. 38 (no. 3), p. 41 (nos. 20-21), and p. 43 (aos, 28-31) establish the fact that this series was struck just after the caprure of Syracuse in 212 B.C. 2 A recent archaic find in Rome with ‘Minotanrus' is noticed in. AJ 1954, p. 324-yo THE MAIN ASPECTS OF POLITICAL PROPAGANDA ON variety of that mythical leader—like Hekate or Perchta—of the primi- tive secret society which was the nucleus of the first Roman army. (The warlike Juno Sospita, Queen of the Sabines, with her he-goat head-dress, attests the survival of these primitive conceptions in the historical epoch.) The centaur slain by Hercules on the reverse of the same coin may be Cacus. The sextans with Sol, Luna, and two of the fixed stars which completes this archaic set drew its inspiration. from. a quite different source. The astral constellation of the rebirth of the Golden Age, a promise of unstinted luck after the terrible suffer- ings of the dreadful war, cannot but give a further illustration of the well-known fact that superstition steadily gained ground as the intoler- able pressure of war increased, and that the authorities employed a homocopathic treatment to check the spiritual disease. So did the elder Scipio Afticanus, who allowed the idol of the Great Mother- Goddess of Asia Minor to be fetched to Rome as an antidote to the underground mystics.* To cover the expenses of the splendid games, celebrated in her honour from 204. 8.c. onwards, bronze coins were struck with the turreted bust of Magna Mater and the naked acro- batic young noble horseman with his whip in the right hand (Pl. 75, no, 12). This is the first time that, very exceptionally, a brief flash of contemporary comment intrudes into the solemn, timeless pattern of the third century 3.c, WI Greek beauty, reflected more or less fully in the first phase of the silver and gold coinage of Rome, is due not to the mere chance of these coins being struck in southern Italy, but to the conscious will of the new big power of the Mediterranean world to present herself as a cultural entity. The gods of primitive Rome, aliens to the Greeks, which appeared during the fatal war against Hannibal, seem to an~ nounce a different course. The new silver coinage, starting sometime after Zama, loses the fine Greek style, and the barren scheme of the helmeted female head. as well as the careless pictures of the reverses illustrate the break with cultural aspirations in the Hellenistic manner. The reactionary spirit, the severitas maiorum, so well known through the activity of the elder Cato, is reflected in those unpleasant figures.THE COINAGE OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 1m In the first half of the second century 8.c. the res publice still keeps a hold on the coin-types. The legend still names ROMA alone on the first issues; and when unpretending small symbols or letters unob- trusively join themselves to the customary types, half hidden in a corner, no real change can yet be noticed. But these initials of officials and the badges of their clans soon begin to be written and illustrated in a more explicit and pretentious manner, till they supersede the habitual symbols and legends concerning the state, trumpeting forth instead the glory of their ancient lineage. The inventory of types relating to the noble houses, which was established gradually in this way on the denarii from about the years of the Gracchi, was in itself anything but new. New only was the fact that these tools and manifestations of private family propaganda, once designed for political competition, invaded. such official docu- . ments as the legal means of payment, and thus threw aside the idea and the symbols of the state. But this fact corresponds to the fatal evolution in which the Republic was dissolved. The protectors and prototypes of the patrician cavalry, the Dioscuri, still revealed a tradition born in the devoted service of common interests. There seem to have been no other underlying associations when the heavenly twins were gradually replaced by divinities in their chariots, drawn for those of first importance by four, and for those of lesser significance by two horses—a very Roman feature indeed.! But the divine charioteers multiply; and the more that new ones appear, the more the supposition is justificdl—manifest by the Venus of the Julii and by some others—that their choice is due to special relations with the family of the official in charge. A quiet but highly significant transformation, only a few aspects of which we can trace here, is thus revealed. IV Since the monetary representations concerning the idea of the state began to vanish in the decades of the Gracchi owing to the selfish efforts of the controlling officials to supplant the old devices by new ones, relating to the might and glory of their families, no general ™ HL Mattingly, Roman’ Coins, p. $7. 1d., PrBAc. 1933, pp. 282 ff. But ef. also S. Hitrem, in the commemorative volume for P. Oikonomos, Athens, 1954, pp. 32 £.ja THE MAIN ASPECTS OF POLITICAL PROPAGANDA ON rules or prescriptions restrained the new trend. The monetales had a completely free hand in the introduction and choice of the types, and therefore the emergence of the relentless egoism of the clans developed smoothly and rapidly. Both the partisans of the conservative politics of the nobility and also the young revolutionaries who fostered the welfare of the common man were alike publishing the great achieve- ments of their own forerunners, An unheard of variety of new types inundated the denarii, but the impression of a confused aggregation disappears the moment we recognize the leading tendencies of this medley of pictures. Some few examples will illustrate this. The main theme of the silver coinage from Marius to Caesar was the glory of the leading gentes, which had a quite different practical significance for their young offspring functioning as IlIviri monetales than it would have today. In ancient—and still in modern—times, in the mind of the man in the street to whom the propaganda was directed, the great deeds of ancestors created prejudice in favour of the trustworthiness of their offspring and were regarded as an anticipated guarantee of their efficiency in the magistrature. In Rome, quite obviously, the exploits of ancestors famous in war were the most favoured in coin-propaganda. Witness the celebrated cavalry-charges of A. Postumius Regillensis and Manlius Torquatus, the less-known capture of a hostile camp by C. Numonius Vaala; the heroic single combats of C. Minucius Thermus (cos. 193 3.c.), M. Servilius Pulex Geminus, and M. Sergius Silus (praetor in. 193 3.c.); A. Licinius Nerva on horseback, dragging an enemy by the hair behind him; Crepusius, brandishing his spear as a cavalryman; valiant young men like the military tribune P. Fonteius Capito or the Acmilius who killed a foe when 15 years old. T. Didius brandishes a knout that suffices to shatter his opponent, a fully armed slave— the reality of the terrible upheaval of the slaves in Sicily was quite different, of course. A naval victory of P. Sulpicius Galba and his magnanimity towards the Greeks is adroitly illustrated. (Pl. 48, no. 21) with an iconographical scheme which corresponds to the glori- fication. of Aemilius Paullus (Pl. 43, no. 8). A decisive victory— perhaps a fictitious one—of a Memmius is symbolized by a trophy; M. Claudius Marcellus is represented carrying the spolia opima of a Gallic chieftain (222 8.c.) to Juppiter Feretrius on the denarius ofTHE COINAGE OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC B the partisan of Caesar, Lentulus Marcellinus (PI. 55, no. 16), struck in Sicily. Famous enemies are shown: Philip V on the coins of two Marcii Philippi, King Bituitus of the Arverni on a series struck by officials who—as H. Mattingly suggested—were entrusted with the founda- tion of Narbo Martius; Jugurtha and his delivery through Bocchus to Sulla on denarii of Faustus Sulla; Vercingetorix in fetters under a trophy, adoming an emission of coins by Caesar in 49, The magni- ficent head of a frantically rushing Gallic warrior and that of a mourn~ ing Gallic woman symbolize Caesar's victorious campaigns on. coins of one of his former legates (Pl. 50, nos. 10-11); the head of the mourning Hispania brings to mind the warlike achievement of A. Postumius Albinus, praetor in 180 3.c. (PL. 40, no. 16). The carnyx with a Celtic shield as petty emblems on an early denarius of some member of the clan of the Decii, announcing a Celtic victory, and their appearance on a denarius of 49 3.c. (PL. 49, no. 17), where they fill the whole reverse with the same purpose, illustrate the early restriction and the later expansion of family- propaganda, heedless of the state, Similarly the trunk of an elephant, calling to mind the decisive victory of L. Caecilius Metellusin 251, and the Macedonian shield, evoking the memory of the success of a later Caecilius, reappear on coins of subsequent generations more and more prominently displayed in the foreground, displacing step by step the representations of the common weal. The triumphal monument of the consul C. Coelius Caldus, erected by L. Caldus, is the ‘certificate’ of the monetalis C. Coelius Caldus (Pl. 47, nos. 22 ff.) of his own fit- ness for the ascent up the ladder of office. A little later such a trophy has already come to advertise the personal glory of the originator of a coin; L, Staius Murcus graciously gives'his hand in help to the collapsed Asia (Pl. 112, no. 10). In this respect, there is no difference between Caesarians and their ‘Republican’ opponents: personal pro- paganda gains the upper hand with them all. Often, instead of success on the battlefield, stress is laid on the help of the divinity which enabled the general to win a victory. The capture of Privernum (341 B.c.) through his ancestor is announced in 58 3.c. with the accompanying picture of Juppiter propugnator by the aedile P. Plautius Hypsaeus, who wished to pave the way24 THE MAIN ASPECTS OF POLITICAL PROPAGANDA ON for the consulate with this exhibition of ancestral virtue. For the same purpose, a well-known sacrifice to Diana by A. Postumius Albinus before a decisive clash is exhibited on asilver piece struck by a descendant of his. On the occasion of the sacrifice the union of the whole of Latium under the leadership of Rome was predicted by the goddess. ‘We have enlarged on these details to show that features of the innumerable wars of Rome could be remembered, legendary and real victories alike, together with dubious and spurious family claims to such achievements; great leaders of the past and secondary figures are alike recorded. This many-coloured picture was conceived on the same lines as the contemporaneous swelling up of the annalistic tradition from the time of the Gracchi—conceived in both cases to vindicate the political aspirations of the nobility for the supreme power in the state. Vv To this fostering of reputation by the clans of the aristocracy were due the statues of their ancestors, multiplied by them to such a gross ex- tent that again and again many had to be'removed to free the forum and its adjacent parts from a rampant growth. On the coins there appeared first the well-known column in the corn-market of the early praefectus annonae L. Minucius (Pl. 26, no. 15; PL. 27, no. 16), whose spurious inscription (Livy iv, 16, 2-4) was inspired by the ruthless exhibitionism of his offspring. The statue of a renowned Man, Aemilius Lepidus (Pl. 94, no. 11), of a Licinius Macer (Pl. 38, no. 9), came next, with that of L. Marcius Philippus (Pl. 93, no. 18) and the equestrian statue of Philippus on the arches of his aqua Marcia (PL. 48, no. 17). The prototypes of scenes conceived to glorify Aemi- lius Paullus, the conquerer of Macedonia (Pl. 43, no. 8), and the suc- cessful general Ser. Sulpicius Galba (PL. 48, no. 21), or to record the beneficial activity of A. Postumius Albinus in Spain (Pl. 40, no. 16 zev.), or the sacrifice of Postumius Albinus to Diana (Pl. 40, no. 15) a besought in wall-paintings and reliefs decorating the atria of the nobles. The statues of ancestors and the illustration of their glorious deeds were gradually replaced by the likenesses and exploits of the living,THE COINAGE OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 78 as already stated. Essential in this evolution was the exhibitionism of totally insignificant figures, until the most powerful actors in public life checked such boastfulness and made propaganda an increasingly monarchical monopoly. If the attributes of the ancestral high offices were by preference represented on the earlier coins, the typical implements of the priesthoods of the state held by the coining offi- cials themselves began to occupy the reverses about the time of the first consulate of Pompey and Crassus (Pl. 44, nos. 17 and 19) and such devices were not only imitated by men. of lesser importance but were also displayed systematically, as equivalent in some way to titles, by Caesar and Antonius, Brutus and Cassius, Sextus Pompey and Octavian. In 58 B.c. M. Aemilius Scaurus presents the submission of the Arabian sheik Aretas without a reference to his own supreme com- mander Pompey (Pl. 123, nos. 7-9), just as A. Plautius, in 54, pre- sents the humiliation of the high priest of the Jews (Pl. 49, no. 2). This self-glorification can extend to the quite frivolous commemora- tion of a Macedonian quaestorship and to the delightful hunting of goats in Crete by the friend of Cicero, Cn. Plancius, in 54 (Pl. 49, no. 3), who depicts the head of the personification of Macedonia and Cretan hunting-prey on his denarii struck when he was a curule aedile. Such diversions could not long flourish. Behind the officials in charge of the mint appeared the shadow of the mightiest—first, that of Pompey. Hints of the arrival of a new Romulus, founder of a fortunate state of affairs, in 62 (Pl. 45, nos. 5-8) and in 57 (Pl. 48, no. 10) allude to him; his is the patroness, Venus, celebrated by the monetales between 61 and 55 (Pl. 46, nos. 2-8; Pl. 47, nos. 18, 21; Pl. 48, nos. 20, 22). As the conqueror of the world and the bringer of peace Pompey is celebrated on coins of his son-in-law in 55 (Pl. 48, no. 23 rev.) and by L. Vinicius in 52 (PI. 49, no. 4). He is still more elevated and transfigured to a divine being by his sons from 46 on- wards, as was Caesar in 44 and from thesummer of 43 onwards. Brutus let himself be portrayed as redeemer from evil (servator) (Pl. 111, no. 12), whereas C, Cassius was satisfied with the more modest role of the tyrannicide, who vindicated freedom, ‘Against the alarming superiority of the power of Pompey and his two associates the old aristocracy countered vigorously with a display76 THE MAIN ASPECTS OF POLITICAL PROPAGANDA ON of the merits of their gentes. Among these arguments, justifying the collective rule of the nobility instead of the paramount personal might of the triumvirate, were the magnificent public buildings erected by their ancestors.! The puteal Libonis (Pl. 43, nos. 10-13), the basilica Aemilia with the imagines clipeatae of that princely house (PL 46, nos, 11-12), the old villa publica renovated by T. Didius (PL 48, no. 7), and the arcades of the agua Marcia (Pl. 48, nos. 17-18) are the main examples of this propaganda-show of buildings, the political significance of which is stressed by the colossal efforts of Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar to outdo them in size and splendour and by the imperial monopoly of the main building activity in the architecture represented under and after Augustus. VI If the reverses of the denarii were completely appropriated for the exhibition of ancestral glory in the last century of the Republic, from its beginning onwards the heads of divine beings on the ob- verses could not be so easily exchanged for their portraits, in spite of the highly important role of the wax masks in all the display of prestige of the princely houses. The obverse on Greek coins had been reserved for the gods of the Greek city-states and for the portraits of the Hellenistic rulers. Ifin Rome the imagines maiorum intruded upon this especially honoured preserve, this meant a break-out of the aspira- tions of the nobility aiming atsomething morethan theleading position they had obtained. Those fumosae imagines had in fact a magic effect on the highly conservative voters of the rural tribes, whose support was of decisive value in the comitia tributa and for whose mentality the established descent, even the physical likenesses, detectable in the offspring of famous statesmen guaranteed a repetition of ancestral efficiency. This great political effect is the true explanation of the fact that the public exhibition of ancestral wax masks on periodic and solemn occasions was a jealously guarded privilege of the nobility. And long before the appearance of ancestral portraits on the coins the aristo- crats wore finger-rings with such portraits, and signed letters and * CE Miinzer, Romisthe Adelsparteien und Adelfamilien, pp. 317 £THE COINAGE OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 7 documents with them. The revolutionaries, too, realized the value of the likenesses of their dead leaders for the sake of their propaganda. The statues of the dead Gracchi and of the living praetor of 85 3.c., Marius Gratidianus, erected and honoured with religious ceremonies by the people; the possession and the public exhibition of the bust of the seditious tribune L. Appuleius Saturninus—both forbidden by the senate—in 99 and in 63; the reintroduction of the masks of Marius in the funeral procession of his aunt in 68 by Caesar, and Caesar’s reconstruction of the trophies of Marius together with his portrait~ statue—all these asserted the stirring power of the features of those great past political leaders, not to mention the year $5, when the hirelings of the oligarchy tried to destroy the statues of Pompey. If, in spite of such evident propagandist value, ancestral portraits did not appear on the coins till the last agony of the Republic, this can be due only to the existence of the final remnants of the sense of subordination to the state, which disappeared in the fifties. The only exception is easily to be explained: the helmeted head of Scipio Africanus and the allusion to his divine descent on the denarii of Cn. Cornelius Blasio at the beginning of the century (Pl. 94, nos. 16-17; PI. 95, nos. 1-4) glorified a national hero, even though his clan too profited from his exaltation. But the real series of ancestral portraits —of human ones—begins very late: the head of C. Coelius Caldus (cos. 94) appeared in 54; in 53 those of Q. Pompeius Rufus (cos. 88) and of Sulla. In so M. Brutus puts the heads of the tyrannicides L. Brutus and Servilius Ahala on his coins—in the same spirit as the above-mentioned partisans of the welfare of the people did with the portraits of Saturninus and Marius. In 49 Decimus Brutus exhibited the portrait of his father, A. Postumius Albinus, on his denarii; a little later Lentulus Marcellinus did the same with the great Marcellus. In 45 C. Antius Restio followed their example with a fine ancestral portrait. Still more significant, of course, was the portrait ofa living man on the coins—cither as a sign of his aspiration to absolute power, or as a testimony of the willingness of peoples or cities to recognize the sovereign qualities of such a man. The portraits of the Elder Africanus on silver coins in Spain and on bronzes of Canusium,' as well as the * Mattingly, Roman Coins, pl. 24, no. 2; E. S. G. Robinson, NC Proc, 1930) p. 4-38 THE MAIN ASPECTS OF POLITICAL PROPAGANDA ON kinglike portrait on the aureus of T. Quinctius Flamininus with a Latin legend, though not originated by them, allow us to understand the sudden rise of the kingly man who exasperated’ Cato the Elder. It was the vehement reaction led by Cato which delayed the emer- gence of the single dictator-like personality fora long while, and, with it, the portraiture of living persons on coins, But a backdoor had been left open on the reverse of the coins and portraiture of the living crept in through it, As early as the epoch of the Gracchi, M. Minucius Augurinus was represented paying religious honours to his famous forerunner (P]. 26, no. 15), like another member of the same family a little later (Pl. 27, no. 14). In 100 B.c. the quaestors Piso and Caepio are to be seen supervising the distribution of corn to the people (PI. 29, no. 12), like the later plebeian aediles Fannius and Critonius (PL. 38, no. 6). But this sort of self-advertising was restricted after the civil war to the party-leaders, whose portraits seem to be put on the military standards and banners with their names from that time onward, as A. von Premerstein. suggested. The triumphal representations of Marius (Pl. 32, no. 7), of Sulla (PL. 120, nos, 510), and soon after him of Pompey (Pl. 110, no. 13), and the picture of the gilded bronze equestrian statue of Sulla (Pl. 110, no. 11) illustrate this, Some of the coins just mentioned bring out still more clearly the role of the living leaders, even turning the obverse to appropriate advantage: thus Sulla Felix employs the bust of Virtus, and the young Magnus that of Africa. Such close connexions between prominent personalities and special obverses make the latter the forerunners of living portraits— for example the Clementia of Caesar (Pl. 49, nos. 12-15) and the elephant, trampling down a Gaulish war trumpet, alluding also to Caesar (Pl. 103, no. 5). The portrait of the party-leader on the obverse creepsin in 46 through somewhat curious ways. The beautiful veiled female head on the aurei of the praetor A. Hirtius (PL. 51, nos. 20-21) assumes the features of the rugged face of Caesar (PI. 51, no. 24), In the same period the sons of Pompey struck asses in Spain on which both the profiles of Janus have been assimilated to the features of their father (Pl. ror, nos. 13-14)—an anticipation of the conception of divi filius by Augustus, and also a challenge to Caesar, the stimulus of which could well have