Footnotes

---------- What I Like About Ancient Coins ----------

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Focus down

To focus close in with a macro lens, adjust the lens to the highest possible magnification and rack the camera up and down until the coin is roughly in focus. Take care not to impact the coin with the lens, which could damage both. Then use the lens adjustment until the coin is perfectly in focus.

Horn and sinew

Tall bows like the English longbow were made from wood, but in the east composite bows were common. They made use of the elastic properties of horn and sinew. Horn was strong in compression and was used on the inside curve of the bow, and sinew was strong in tension and was used on the outside. They were usually glued to a wooden core using animal glue. These bows were relatively small and had a typical recurved shape, and were handy for use on horseback, unlike the yew wood longbows used at Agincourt which were much too large. So they were commonly used by nomadic tribes and specialised horseback fighters. These small recurved bows were the sort of thing used by the Parthians for their famous "Parthian shot."

Often shown winged

A bronze dichalkon of Trajan. It is 13x15mm across and weighs 1.05 grammes. The obverse shows the laureate head of the emperor; the reverse shows a winged caduceus. The letters in the reverse, Li on the left and a Digamma on the right, indicate the regnal year 16, 112-113 CE.

There are many coins which show a winged caduceus on one side. Some are small and of low demonination, like this dichalkon struck for circulation in Egypt. Trajan also produced a quadrans with a similar design for circulation in the main part of the empire. Other caduceus coins are larger and more impressive. Most of those are beyond my budget.

Stigma

This is a quotation from Professor Ted Buttrey, originally posted in Moneta-L on 14 May 2003:

(1) The digamma was the 6th letter of the archaic Greek alphabet, representing our sound "w", and named "wau" (wow!). After it fell out of speech, and out of the alphabet, it was named "digamma" by later generations who didn't know it directly -- the new name describes its shape, looking like one gamma on top of another. The shape survived and was taken up into the Latin alphabet in the same position but with a different sound (unknown in classical Greek) -- it is our F (same shape,same position).

The Greeks did not have a separate system of symbols to represent numbers, as we have with our so-called Arabic numerals. Among several systems they developed alphabetic numeration, which I believe is not attested before the 3rd cent. BC. Anyhow the digamma (F), no longer used in written Greek, was retained for the number 6. (In the same way the qoppa, which had been abandoned because kappa served perfectly well, was retained for numeration, in its original position in the alphabet, as it is in ours, between P and R; and represented the number 90.)

Even in antiquity the digamma was taking on a cursive form, which came to look somthing like a square C with a little tail.

(2) There is no such thing as an ancient numeral stigma. This is an illusion, based on a modern misunderstanding, and is something that still needs to be corrected in Unicode. The ancient word "stigma" means a mark, a scar, a tattoo, and has nothing to do with the digamma or with numeration.

With the invention of printing in the 15th cent. the new Greek fonts copied manuscript hands, and included not just individual letters but all kinds of fancy abbreviations and ligatures. One ligature was the combination sigma-tau, ST, which got the name of "stigma", I suppose modelled on "sigma", that is as "sigma" = S, so "stigma" = ST.

Meanwhile the digamma had gone on being used in alphabetic numeration for "6", in manuscript Greek, and then in the earliest printed Greek -- and indeed is so used to this day. Unfortunately, a close similarity developed between the shape of the ST ligature and that of the developed, cursive digamma. As a result the name "stigma" came to be applied mistakenly to both of them. It is still so used, or rather misused even today. For example, alphabetic numeration is found in the paragraphs and subparagraphs of legislation; and in modern Greek dictionaries under "stigma" you find one meaning as the number 6.

This is all a misunderstanding that goes back several centuries, and is now fixed permanently in the language.

What is yet more annoying, the ligatures of the earliest printed Greek have by now all been resolved into their separate letters, so the combination once described by the term "stigma" is just printed as regular sigma tau, and the typographic term "stigma" has gone completely out of use. Yet the word survives, wrongly, in alphabetic numeration for the character still used for "6" -- which is really the good old wau/digamma in cursive form, misunderstood.

It survives, I should say, in dictionaries, but not I think in speech. Hardly any modern Greek alphabetic fonts include a symbol for it. So when they have to use letters numerically they are as follows: [I can't provide Greek letters here: imagine them] --

1=A' alpha 2=B' beta 3=G' gamma 4=D' delta 5=E' epsilon 6=ST' "stigma" ...and so on.

That is, they mis-name the digamma "stigma", and then don't have a character to print it, so they print "sigma tau" instead as an abbreviation. And so pronounce it too: I've tried it on a modern unversity-educated Greek, who read it off as "sigma tau", not as "stigma", and actually did not know that term.

Anyhow, the ancient number 6 was represented by wau/digamma, and there's an end of it. Forget stigma: it didn't exist as a numerical notion; that's just a relatively modern mistake.

Ted Buttrey

Chlamys

A plate from the 1950 edition of Richter's Sculpture & Sculptors of the Greeks showing a man wearing a chlamys This is a quote from Patricia Lawrence on the Forum Classical Numismatics Discussion Board, January 2008, in response to a comment that a Latin dictionary defined a chlamys as a military cloak.

Though a Greek might wear a chlamys, a simple cloak, formed we think by draping a square of wool diagonally (this seems plain on some vase-paintings), over armor to keep warm, it is fundamentally a traveler's cloak, which is why Hermes wears it (like his petasos), as well as Charon, as well as shepherds, or any other male. That dictionary ought not to have specified 'military', since the garment is not specific. From representations, I have the impression that the Roman paludamentum, as a military cloak, was heavier than the average Greek chlamys. I wonder what the Romans called a shepherd's cloak or a simple cloak worn by a farmer bringing produce to market. Not chlamys: a more Greek-specific word is hard to imagine. Anyhow, either Helios or Sol might wear one, or anyone else. Pat L.

P.S. The attached scan is from the 1950 edition of Richter's Sculpture & Sculptors of the Greeks but it originated in Léon Heuzey's study of Greek garments, draping models based on vase-paintings and sculpture. His French models look a lot more comfortable than Margarete Bieber's German ones, and everyone always uses him for the chlamys.

Holed drachms of Neapolis

A holed and broken drachm of Neapolis showing a gorgoneion on the obverse and a female head, possibly Artemis Pathenos, on the reverse. It is 14mm in diameter and weighs 1.50 grammes.

At the time of writing (May 2008), several holed drachms of this type have turned up recently on eBay. All of them have been holed through the gorgoneion's mouth, mostly directly in the centre like this one. I do not know whether this has any significance other than it is an easy place to make the hole without destroying the appearance of the head. (This specimen has a crystallised interior and was broken in transit to me.)

Coins held in the mouth

It is often said that the ancient Greeks carried small change in their mouths. It would be quite practical, though insanitary, to carry a few of those tiny silver coins in one cheek. A trihemiobol (one and a half obols) is just over a centimetre in diameter and weighs less than a gramme. But the only primary source I can discover for this is a passage in Aristophanes' play "The Birds" (Ορνιθες), dating from 414 BCE, performed that year for the Festival of Dionysus. Here is one translation of the relevant passage, by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC:

PISTHETAIROS: To resume–way back then the Kite was king.
He ruled the Greeks.

CHORUS LEADER: King of the Greeks!!

PISTHETAIROS: That's right.
As king he was the first to show us how
to grovel on the ground before a kite.

EUELPIDES: By Dionysus, I once saw a kite
and rolled along the ground, then, on my back,
my mouth wide open, gulped an obol down.
I had to trudge home with an empty sack.

The translator says that there was an old Greek custom of saluting the kite as the bird announcing the arrival of spring by rolling on the ground. On doing this, the character has accidentally swallowed his money, and has to go home hungry.

Here is another version, no translator's name given:

EUELPIDES
By Zeus! that's what I did myself one day on seeing a kite; but at the moment I was on my knees, and leaning backwards with mouth agape, I bolted an obolus and was forced to carry my meal-sack home empty.

An ancient Greek sacrifice

This is a description of a sacrifice to Athena from Homer's Odyssey III 417-72, translated by W.Shewring, modified. It is taken from "Religion in the Ancient Greek City" by Louise Brun Zaidman and Pauline Schmitt Pantel, translated by Paul Cartledge.

Nestor, Gerenian horseman, was himself the first to speak: "Dear sons, lose no time in bringing my wishes to fulfilment; before any other divinity, I wish to propitiate Athene, because she came in visible presence to the sumptuous banquet of our god (Poseidon). Let one of you go down to the plain to fetch a heifer; make sure that she comes as soon as may be, with a cowherd driving her! Let another go to the black ship of Telemakhos and bring all of his comrades except for two! Let a third order the goldsmith Laerkes to come and gild the heifer's horns! The rest of you, stay together here, but tell the serving-women to prepare a banquet in these great halls, and to bring us wood and seats and sparkling water."

So he spoke and all set about their tasks. Up from the plain came the heifer, and from the swift shp the comrades of stout-hearted Telemakhos. The smith came too, holding in his hands the tools of his craft, the anvil and hammer and shapely tongs, to work the gold. And Athene came to receive the sacrifice. Aged horseman Nestor handed over the gold, and the smith deftly worked it and gilded the heifer's horns to delight the goddess when she should see an offering so lovely. Stratios and godly Ekhephron led the beast forward by the horns, and Aretos came to them bringing from the store-room a flowery-patterned vessel that held the lustral water; in his other hand he carried a basketful of barley-groats. Nearby stood warlike Thrasymedes, with a sharp axe in his hand to fell the heifer, while Perseus held the bowl for the blood. Aged horseman Nestor began the rite with the lustral water and the barley-groats, and then addressed to Athene a long prayer, throwing the few hairs cut from the victim's head into the flames.

When they had prayed and had sprinkled the barley-groats, mighty-spirited Thrasymedes, son of Nestor, straightway took his stand beside the beast and struck her. The axe sliced through the sinews of the neck and the heifer collapsed senseless, whereupon Nestor's daughters and daughters-in-law and revered wife Eurydike, eldest of the daughters of Klymenos, raised the ritual scream. Then the young men lifted the victim up from the broad-pathed ground and held her, while Peisistratos prince of men cut her throat. The black blood gushed out, and the life departed from the bones. Then quickly they divided the flesh; at once they cut out the thigh-bones in due ritual fashion, covered them with the fat twice-folded, and laid the raw meat on top. The old king proceeded to burn these offerings on cloven wood and to pour glowing wine upon them; the young men stood round them holding five-pronged forks. When the thigh-bones were utterly consumed and they had tasted the entrails, they sliced and spitted the rest. They gripped the spits that went through the meat and roasted it thus.

Meanwhle Telemakhos had been bathed by lovely Polykastew, Nestor's youngest daughter; she bathed him, anointed him well with oil, then dressed him in a handsome cloak and tunic. He came from the bath looking like a god and went to sit by Nestor shepherd of the people.

Having roasted the outer flesh and removed it from the spits, they sat down and began to feast, and faithful serving-men attended on them, pouring wine into the golden cups.

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The content of this page was last updated on 1 May 2008