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Goats, Beans and Biscotti

  • Writer: sulla80
    sulla80
  • Sep 12, 2021
  • 9 min read

Updated: Jul 19

‘With these beans I throw, I redeem me and mine.’

If you keep asking, "what evidence is there to support this?", and follow the trail of references, researching an ancient coin leads you to interesting connections, related and unrelated to the coin. With today’s coin, I didn’t expect to end up with goats, fava beans and biscotti.


Events of the Time

Let's start with some context for the coin. In 88 BC Mithridates VI of Pontus overran Roman Asia, and Sulla received the command against him. Sulla crossed to Greece in 87 and spent the winter besieging Athens, which fell to him in March 86. Behind him in Rome, Cinna and the aged Gaius Marius seized the city in 87 and had Sulla declared a public enemy. Marius entered his seventh consulship alongside Cinna in January 86 and died within weeks; Lucius Valerius Flaccus was elected consul in his place. The new government sent Flaccus east with an army, nominally to supersede Sulla, but he was murdered by his own legate Gaius Fimbria, who took over the army.


Gaius Fimbria is remembered by Cicero in this way - Quintus Scaevola had tried to reconcile Marian and Sullan factions:

“We lately had a most audacious man in this city, Caius Fimbria, a man, as is well known among all except among those who are mad themselves, utterly insane. He, when at the funeral of Caius Marius, had contrived that Quintus Scaevola, the most venerable and accomplished man in our city, should be wounded…”
-M. Tullius Cicero, For Sextus Roscius of Ameria, 12.33

In 85 Sulla, anxious to return to Italy and settle accounts at Rome, made a lenient peace with Mithridates at Dardanos, then turned on Fimbria, whose army deserted him and who died by his own hand. Marcus Junius Brutus, the future assassin of Julius Caesar, was born the same year, the year this coin was struck.

The Denarius

With this backdrop, this coin was minted in 85 BC. A particularly nice specimen, fresh, well executed dies, perfectly toned, slightly off-center obverse with no major elements lost. Recently, I’ve found it hard to come by Roman republican coins where I am willing to pay the price. This coin is a satisfying find.

Mn. Fonteius C.f., 85 BC, AR denarius, Rome mint

Obv: MN FONTEIUS C•F, Laureate head of Veiovis (or Apollo) right; Roma monogram below chin, thunderbolt below head

Rev: Infant winged Genius or Cupid, seated on goat, standing right; pilei of the Dioscuri above; thyrsus with fillet in exergue; all within laurel wreath

Ref: Crawford 353/1a; Sydenham 724; Fonteia 9


The Monogram

Crawford is rarely off the mark, even though many years have passed since his first publication of Roman Republican Coinage (RRC) in 1974. However, his note on the monogram on the obverse of this coin seems off. He associates the monogram with Apollo. Instead, Roma seems to me to be a more obvious answer. The coins of L Piso Frugi seem to offer compelling support for the interpretation of Roma with the monogram, and full spelling in same position between these two variants of Crawford 340 :

This evidence is mentioned in Holman's 2019 paper and observed earlier by Leopold Montague in 1895. There is just enough difference between the monogram on these coins and the monogram on mine to leave a little room for doubt (crossbar on the A in ROMA).


The Fonteius family was from Tusculum, a center for the cult of the Dioscuri, which probably explains the two caps (of the Dioscuri) above the goat on the reverse.


Who is represented on this coin?

For the deity on the obverse and reverse – the picture is complicated. There are arguments made for Apollo, for young Jupiter, for a volcanic and underworld anti-Jupiter. All deserve some critical looks at "what evidence is there to support this?".


Wissowa in 1902 provides the anti-Jupiter explanation for Veiovis in Religion und Kultus der Römer. He outlines support for Veiovis as a god of the underworld. According to the Fasti Venusini (CIL I² p. 318), May 21st, falling between the Lemuria and the Carnaria, was a festival of Vediovis. The name, Vediovis or Vedius or Vejovis, identifies him as the opposite of Diovis, Dius, Jovis that is, the god of heaven pointing to an underworld god. (i.e. Ve-jovis meaning anti-Jupiter)


She-goats, raw meat, ivy and beans appear to all be associated with the underworld and death. This passage from Aulus Gellius describes one of many restrictions on the Flamen Dialis, high priest of Jupiter.

“It is not customary for the Dialis to touch, or even name, a she-goat, raw flesh, ivy, and beans.”
- Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights X.15

In 1917, A.L. Frothingham provides a well researched overview of evidence, extending the underworld concept and connects the god to volcanic activity, underground thunderbolts, and the passing of souls. Frothingham's volcanic reading finds indirect support in Etruscan lightning lore. Ammianus Marcellinus, writing in the late fourth century AD, describes an officer of Julian's losing his nerve in the campaigns of 357 and explains it from the Etruscan books of Tages and of Vegoia, a prophetess of lightning doctrine: 

“ut in Tageticis libris legitur et Vegonicis fulmine mox tangendos adeo hebetari ut nec tonitrum nec maiores aliquos possint audire fragores.”
-Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History, Antiquities, XVII.10.2

as we read in the books of Tages​ or of Vegoe that those who are shortly to be struck by lightning are so dulled in their senses that they can hear neither thunder nor any louder crashes whatsoever.
- Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History, Antiquities, XVII.10.2

Veiovis is not named; the passage attests the Etruscan doctrine of ominous lightning that Frothingham connected to the god. It colors his reconstruction rather than proving it.


Although I cannot begin to guess the sex of the goat on the reverse of the coin, Holman notes that the goat is male. This was asserted earlier by T.J. Luce (1968) "...The statue, moreover, was of a she-goat, which Ovid confirms (Fasti 3.443); on the coins a he-goat is pictured..." This does seem to be supported and more obvious on the other coin in this issue Crawford 353/1c.

Mn. Fonteius C.f., 85 BC, AR Denarius (19.5mm, 3.59g), Rome mint

Obv: Laureate head of Apollo-Veiovis right; thunderbolt below

Rev: Infant Genius seated right on goat; pilei of the Dioscuri above; below, filleted thyrsus right; all within wreath

Ref: Crawford 353/1c; Sydenham 724a; Fonteia 10.


Even the later Romans were confused – and Ovid’s explanation of "little Jupiter" seems easy to reject without additional evidence (not to mention the question of she-goat vs. he-goat):

“A she-goat also stands (beside the image of Veiovis); the Cretan nymphs are said to have fed the god; it was the she-goat that gave her milk to the infant Jove. Now I am called on to explain the name. Countrymen call stunted spelt vegrandia, and what is little they call vesca. If that is the meaning of the word, may I not suspect that the shrine of Veiovis is the shrine of the little Jupiter?” 
-Ovid, Fasti, 3.429-448

Babelon (1885) is the source of "winged genius" and Amalthea is clearly challenged again by the goat's sex. He also identified the monogram with Apollo.

Liv Mariah Yarrow adds another thought to this with Aphrodite Pandemos, mentioned in her blog, referencing Pausanias.


"The precinct of the other Aphrodite is surrounded by a wall, and within the precinct has been made a basement, upon which sits a bronze image of Aphrodite upon a bronze he-goat. It is a work of Scopas, and the Aphrodite is named Common. The meaning of the tortoise and of the he-goat I leave to those who care to guess."
- Pausanias, Description of Greece, 6.25.1

and this reference from p.230 of "Religion and Social Transformations in Cyprus" by Papantoniou (2012).


Rome had two temples of Veiovis. The first, on the Tiber Island, was vowed by Lucius Furius Purpureo as praetor in 200 BC during the Gallic war and dedicated on January 1, 194. The second stood on the Capitoline, in the saddle between the two groves where Romulus was said to have opened his asylum, and was dedicated in 192. Livy records both dedications, but his manuscripts call them temples of Jupiter, as in the passage below. The identification with Veiovis rests on emendation: copyists who no longer recognized the name Vediovis normalized it to the familiar Jupiter, and editors restore Veiovis because Ovid and the calendars place his shrines at exactly these two sites.

“Two temples to Jupiter were dedicated that year on the Capitoline; Lucius Furius Purpurio had vowed one while praetor in the Gallic war, the other while consul; the dedication was performed by Quintus Marcius Ralla the duumvir.”
-Livy, History of Rome, XXXV.41.8

Livy himself is inconsistent, recording the island dedication under 194 and then, in the passage below, two temples together in 192; the muddle over sites and names is itself part of the evidence. The links to Veiovis are tenuous (the lightning bolt on the coin), and the iconography of Veiovis summarized by Holman (2019) quoting Fulvio Orsini from 1577: “Orsini’s original conclusion regarding the iconography of Veiovis: mihi quidem obscurum est (‘this is indeed obscure to me’).”

Apollo and Dionysus clasp hands at Delphi, with the omphalos and palm between them. Athenian red-figure calyx-krater from Kerch, attributed to the Kadmos Painter, c. 400 BC. State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, inv. ST 1807 (Beazley Archive 215695).
Apollo and Dionysus clasp hands at Delphi, with the omphalos and palm between them. Athenian red-figure calyx-krater from Kerch, attributed to the Kadmos Painter, c. 400 BC. State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, inv. ST 1807 (Beazley Archive 215695).

For the imagery on this coin, a simpler answer may be lurking, though the evidence does not allow a conclusion. Apollo and Dionysus were two sons of Jupiter joined in myth and in cult, one associated with reason, the other with ecstasy. At Delphi they shared the sanctuary itself: Dionysus presided during the three winter months each year while Apollo was away among the Hyperboreans, the legendary people of the far north (Bilić 2021). On this reading the obverse god is Apollo in his fiercer and older aspect, Veiovis, and the reverse carries the thyrsus of Dionysus, the two brothers sharing the coin as they shared Delphi. In 85 BC, with Sulla's return looming, such a pairing would have stood opposite the Venus that Sulla claimed as his patron.


Beans and Biscotti

Wandering a bit from the coin, following the Veiovis as underworld god theme and his festival in May. May is the month named for elders (ancestors) in Latin maiores, and this passage from Ovid is connected to the discussion of Veiovis and the festivals in May:

It was May month, named for our ancestors (maiores),
And a relic of the old custom still continues.
When midnight comes, lending silence to sleep,
And all the dogs and hedgerow birds are quiet,
He who remembers ancient rites, and fears the gods,
Rises (no fetters binding his two feet)
And makes the sign with thumb and closed fingers,
Lest an insubstantial shade meets him in the silence.
After cleansing his hands in spring water,
He turns and first taking some black beans,
Throws them with averted face: saying, while throwing:
‘With these beans I throw I redeem me and mine.’
He says this nine times without looking back: the shade
Is thought to gather the beans, and follow behind, unseen.
Again he touches water, and sounds the Temesan bronze,
And asks the spirit to leave his house.
When nine times he’s cried: ‘Ancestral spirit, depart,’
He looks back, and believes the sacred rite’s fulfilled.
- Ovid Fasti Book V, Lemuria 5.429-444

Fave dei Morti (Biscotti)


The association of beans and death and the tradition referenced by Ovid, lives on with "Beans of the Dead" cookies, a Halloween/All Saints Day tradition today in some parts of Italy. I haven't tried them yet, but I did look up a couple of recipes (from many): LaCucinaItaliana.com and ItalianHomeCooking.co.uk.


References

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