| Denarius | |
|---|---|
| Laureate head of Italia left, Oscan retrograde legend right UILETIV [víteliú = Italia][1] | Helmeted soldier standing front, head right, holding inverted spear, right foot on (Roman?) standard; left foot on uncertain object; recumbent bull to his right, Oscan "A" in exergue. |
| AR, 3,60 g | |
The family of Social War coinage include all the coins issued by the Italic allies of the Marsic confederation, Marsi, Peligni, Piceni, Vestini, Samnites, Frentani, Marrucini, and Lucani, during the Social War (91-88 BC), their last struggle for independence against the hegemony of Rome.
Inspired by the Roman denarius, their circulation (and, perhaps, their release) continued even after the conflict ended, contemporary and promiscuously with their republican models.
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They consist chiefly of silver coins of the weight of the contemporary Roman denarius, and they are thought to have been issued from the mints of Corfinium and Aesernia.
This coinage, without any doubt, belong to the crucial years of the revolt against Rome (90-89 BC), but coins of the same family may have struck until later, although there is no firm evidence of this. Certainly they circulated in parallel and promiscuously with the Roman denarii of the same weight,.[2] Furthermore, some isolated exemplar come from stratigraphic contexts much more recent than the insurrection against Rome.[2]
There is also in the Paris Collection a isolated gold stater of Attic weight, «beautifully preserved».[3] The unique known exemplar has a weight of 8.47 gr. (a b/w picture of this coin can be seen here. A drawing is in [1] ) and its first appearance dates back to 1827,[4] although Julius Friedländer reported 1930[5]:
But the authenticity of this coin is disputed. The genuineness of the piece was supported by Julius Friedländer in his fundamental work about Oscan coinage[6] with a very strong argument based on the perfect accuracy of the legend when compared with the poor knowledge of the Oscan alphabet and language at the time the coin first appeared (in 1830, according to him, but, really, in 1827), that is, before the pioneering works of Klenze (1839),[7] Mommsen (1845)[8] and Lepsius (1841).[9] The coin, in particular, shows a perfect distinction between i and stressed í (the difference, in Oscan script, is the addiction of a little line[10]), a thinness that none was aware of before the work of Klenze.[10]
Unfavorable arguments come from Secondina Lorenza Cesano[11] and Alberto Campana, who, on the other hand, follows very closely Cesano reasoning.[12]
Some of the iconographic themes were original, others were borrowed from the Roman coinage.
In any case, the borrowed themes acquired new meanings or resonances: thus, for example, the heads on the obverse was usually a personification of Italia depicted as a goddess with a helmet, which replaced the head of Rome, accompanied by a legend reproducing his name, ITALIA, in the Latin alphabet or VITELIU (víteliú = Italia) in Oscan alphabet[1] (there is a unique copy, actually in the de Blacas collection, known to report the double LVITELLIU [vítelliú]).[13]
The inscriptions were partly in Oscan, partly in Latin characters, the pieces being struck by a central mint, with two different and synchronous issues, one for the Oscan-speaking and one for the Latin-speaking insurgents.
Legends often record the names of the chief leaders of the Revolt: Quintus Poppaedius Silo, Gaius Papius Mutilus, with his title Imperator, an unknown Numerius Lucius (?), and others.
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