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Gareth Harney

@OptimoPrincipi

27 Jul

1) On a spring day in 1907, two schoolboys were playing on the banks of the River Alde at the edge of the village of Rendham, near Saxmundham, Suffolk. One of the boys, Arthur Godbold, spotted what he thought was a football, submerged in the murky waters...

2) Arthur used a hoe to lever the mysterious round object out of the muddy riverbed. It soon came free and Arthur heaved the weighty thing from the waters. Wiping away the muck, he stared with disbelief into a pair of empty eyes. In his hands he held a head made of metal..

3) The two boys were delighted with their odd find and Arthur carried the life-size head back to his home in the village. With no one able to make much sense of it, the head was painted with whitewash and mounted on a post in the garden as a curiosity..

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Gareth Harney

@OptimoPrincipi

26 Jul

New coin: I am fascinated by the way Romans adapted their founding myths for the miniature canvasses provided by their money, so I am thrilled to add this Republican denarius struck under the moneyer Publius Satrienus in 77 BC, with a stunning depiction of the Roman she-wolf!

The denarius bears a portrait of a helmeted divinity, once assumed to depict the goddess Roma but now often identified as a youthful Mars. Numerical control-marks behind the bust reveal that 105 obverse dies were created for this issue, with my coin struck with the 34th die made.

A fearsome she-wolf strides across the reverse of the coin. In addition to the powerful frame and flexing musculature, a ruffled mane makes her appear more lionly than wolflike; her intimidating physique visually offset by the prominent distended teats that show she is lactating.

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Gareth Harney

@OptimoPrincipi

21 Jul

New coin: Roman Republican denarius serratus, minted by the moneyer Gaius Marius Capito in 81 BC. This moneyer, unrelated to the famous general Gaius Marius, is known only from this remarkable coin issue struck during the bloody dictatorship of Sulla.

The coin bears a portrait of Ceres, Roman goddess of agriculture, the harvest, and the all-important grain supply to Rome; shown wearing a wreath of grain ears, maybe celebrating the end of the civil war and a reestablished supply of grain to the city under Sulla's dictatorship.

The reverse presents a timeless agricultural scene, with a ploughman driving a yoke of two oxen. This may symbolise the prolific founding of new colonies by Sulla, with their boundaries defined by ritualistically marking them with a plough, following ancient Etruscan tradition..

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Gareth Harney

@OptimoPrincipi

17 Jul

1) "The nature of the 'testudo' formation is as follows: our tightly packed soldiers raise their shields over the heads of themselves and their comrades, so that nothing but shields can be seen throughout the entire formation...

2) ..all men are protected from missiles by the density of the arrangement. Indeed, the 'testudo' is so incredibly strong that men can walk upon it, and whenever they come to a narrow ravine, even horses and vehicles can be driven over it!..

3) ..Hence the name 'testudo", which we derive from the Greek for 'tortoise' - a reference to both its strength and the shelter it affords. Our soldiers use it in two ways: either in advancing to make assault on a fort, often even enabling some men to scale the very walls..

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Gareth Harney

@OptimoPrincipi

14 Jul

1) Around the year 1640, an unknown antiquary was visiting some of the historic sites around London - in his own words "intending to notice the fast ruining places and things that have been passed by or little mentiond" by historians..

2) As part of his survey he visited The Tabard, a famous Southwark inn established in 1307 that stood on the east side of Borough High Street, at the ancient intersection of the two Roman roads of Stane Street and Watling Street..

3) The Tabard was a raucous inn, celebrated for its literary links and quill-twiddling patrons; most famously being the inn where the pilgrims gathered at the beginning of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales written over two centuries earlier..

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Gareth Harney

@OptimoPrincipi

12 Jun

1) A Roman grave memorial with a dark secret: this funerary altar was intended as a loving dedication to a child by grieving parents ..but later became a cursed testament of bitterness and betrayal. On the surface, it appears a finely carved but largely normal Roman gravestone...

2) The memorial is dedicated to the young Junia Procula, whose death has left her parents "wretched with grief". With an exactness that shows their love, it states she lived "eight years, eleven months and five days"..

3) 8-year-old Junia is shown in an affectionate portrait above, with ornately curled hair fashionable in the late 1st century; her image placed prominently in the panel usually reserved for the inscription - clearly a beloved child. But looking closer we see something is amiss..

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