Prooemium, in: Words and Coins, from Ancient Greece to Byzantium PDF

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Words and Coins From Ancient Greece to Byzantium mer Words and Coins Florence Darbre, Curator and restorer, fmb Photographers from Ancient Greece to Byzantium Patrizia Roncadi, Museum Management, Laziz Hamani 24.11.2012 – 17.03.2013 fmb Kostas Manolis, (Essay X, figs 1 and 7) Stasha Bibic, Scientifi...

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Words and Coins From Ancient Greece to Byzantium

mer

Words and Coins from Ancient Greece to Byzantium 24.11.2012 – 17.03.2013

An exhibition organized by the Fondation Martin Bodmer in collaboration with the Benaki Museum, Athens Honorary committee For Greece Aimilia Yeroulanou, President of the Board of Trustees, Benaki Museum Ioannis Fikioris, President, Welfare Foundation for Social & Cultural Affairs Helen Molokotos, Vice-president, Public relations, Association of the Greek Ladies of Geneva Prof. Dusan Sidjanski, Professor Emeritus of the University of Geneva, President of the Swiss Committee for the Return of the Parthenon Marbles For Switzerland Laurence Gros, President of the Fondation Martin Bodmer Prof. André Hurst, former Rector, Professor Emeritus of the University of Geneva Prof. Pierre Ducrey, former Rector, Professor Emeritus of the University of Lausanne, Director of the Fondation Hardt Mario Botta, Architect Scientific committee of the exhibition Charles Méla, Professor Emeritus of the University of Geneva, President of the European Cultural Centre, Director of the Fondation Martin Bodmer Angelos Delivorrias, Professor Emeritus of the University of Athens, Director of the Benaki Museum Vasiliki Penna, Ass. Professor of the University of the Peloponnese, Advisor for Numismatics, kikpe Foundation Sylviane Messerli, Doctor of the University of Geneva, Fondation Martin Bodmer Concept Vasiliki Penna Exhibition curator Vasiliki Penna in collaboration with Sylviane Messerli Artistic curator of the exhibition Élisabeth Macheret, Artistic advisor, Scenographer of the Museum of the Fondation Martin Bodmer Exhibition staff Jean-Michel Landecy, Architect, Collaborator for the scenography

Florence Darbre, Curator and restorer, fmb Patrizia Roncadi, Museum Management, fmb Stasha Bibic, Scientific collaborator, fmb Claire Dubois, Administrative coordination, fmb Stéphanie Chassot, Communication matters, fmb Yannis Stoyas, Numismatist, Researcher, kikpe Numismatic Collection Evangelia Georgiou, Numismatist, Scientific collaborator, kikpe Numismatic Collection Electra Georgoula, Archaeologist, Exhibitions and Publications Department, Benaki Museum

Catalogue edited by Vasiliki Penna, Editor in chief and published by MER Paper Kunsthalle, Gent Editorial team Yannis Stoyas Evangelia Georgiou Alexandra Doumas Essays by Prof. Charles Méla Prof. Angelos Delivorrias Ass. Prof. Vasiliki Penna Sylviane Messerli Prof. André Hurst Ute Wartenberg Kagan, Executive Director, American Numismatic Society Yannis Stoyas, Researcher, kikpe Numismatic Collection Andrew Meadows, Deputy Director, American Numismatic Society Prof. François de Callataÿ, Head of curatorial departments of the Royal Library of Belgium, Professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Director of Studies at the École pratique des hautes études, Paris Charikleia Papageorgiadou-Banis, Research Director, National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens Prof. Ioli Kalavrezou, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of the History of Byzantine Art, Harvard University Cécile Morrisson, Research Director Emeritus, National Centre for Scientific Research, Paris, Advisor for Byzantine Numismatics, Dumbarton Oaks Entries by Ass. Prof. Vasiliki Penna Yannis Stoyas Nicolas Ducimetière, Deputy Director, Head Librarian, Fondation Martin Bodmer Translations by Alexandra Doumas (Greek-English) Maria Xanthopoulou (French-English) Lilliam Hurst (Translation of the essay ‘Writing and coining: Egality, legality?’)

Photographers Laziz Hamani Kostas Manolis, (Essay X, figs 1 and 7) Leonidas Papadopoulos (exhibit cat. no. 46) Graphic design Studio Luc Derycke, Luc Derycke, Jeroen Wille Layout assistance Jan Rutten, Ellen Debucquoy Printer Printer Trento, Italy

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers and the editor. ISBN: 978-94-9069-364-0 D/2012/7852/133 MER Paper Kunsthalle Molenaarsstraat 29 B-9000 Gent Belgium t +32 (09) 329 31 22 f +32 (09) 329 31 23 [email protected] www.merpaperkunsthalle.org

Proœmium

Coins and words Perception and metaphor

Language is for the human species the decisive specifying difference that par excellence distinguishes it from every other living creature on the planet Earth and gives man the identity of the rational being. Language, critical element of identity and absolute point of reference, is perhaps the first principle underpinning the history of mankind and giving rise to culture. Gradually, with the invention of writing, language became not just a medium of oral communication but the means of following human activity and, consequently, the vehicle for perpetuating historical memory, by recording, processing, storing and transmitting information. The introduction of coinage is, in its turn, a product of human ingenuity intended to meet everyday needs, under a convention aimed at preserving equity in a society of reciprocity, in which the value of all goods of a certain weight or a certain affinity could be estimated comparatively, fairly and logically, using one medium. Coins of electrum, coins of gold, silver, bronze, nickel, coins of billon, and later paper-money, banknotes or even today’s plastic money-credit cards; all are a human invention to meet the need for guaranteeing and balancing transactions. An invention that was obliged, in the course of time, to submit and adapt to norms determined by the economic and political ambitions of each era.

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The course of the coin from its place of production, the mint, is lost in mazes charted by the orbit and magnitude of human activity. It is disseminated in trade, exchanged for comestibles, chattels and adornments; it becomes remuneration for the soldier, the civil servant, the mason, the artist, for every employee; it accompanies the traveller and the pilgrim in his peregrinations, follows man in his expansionist aspirations, underpins education and the arts, becomes a means of redemption of the human soul through acts of philanthropy and offerings in temples and churches. Thus, the coin is transformed from a medium of transaction to a medium of manifold information. Coins are eyewitnesses and, as Ernest Babelon perceptively states, ‘Coins are irrefutable visual witnesses, relentlessly called upon to contribute information of every sort about humanity’s past for the understanding of history’. Coins are history. A priori, it could be said that the relationship between written discourse and therefore between words and coins is intrinsic. It is a relationship that emerges from their very nature as basic driving forces of the course of mankind and as mastercraftsmen of the art of ‘participating’. Products of inventiveness, they sprung up through a mental alertness and became innovative creations that were incorporated in the everyday practice of people, determining their daily intercourse at a level of intellectual and practical mutual understanding: equitable assessment of meanings, equitable evaluation of material goods, respectively. ‘Words and coins are to be exchanged. They both have value… both bear a stamp of meaning which can be defaced by usage, so that what they meant originally is no longer apparent - save to the expert’.1 Particularly interesting is the fact that this intrinsic relationship between words and coins seems to have consciously influenced the structure of human thought, resulting in the vocabulary of money creeping into a series of figures of speech, which are used to determine human thoughts, attitudes and actions. Typical example the metaphorical expressions framing or characterizing time, such as ‘Time is money’, ‘Save time’, ‘He has invested a lot of time’, ‘It’ll cost you a few minutes’. As Buchan remarks, ‘Man’s great inventions… are words and money, and words about money are therefore of double interest to us’.2 Coins and words in a continuous communication, in a two-way conscious acceptance of the dynamic role of each. Words on coins, that is the inscriptions, had a particular significance and endorsed, in parallel with the iconography on the two sides of the coin, the identity of the issuing authority:3 cities, leagues, ethne, kings, generals, dynasts and satraps. Shortly after their appearance in the late seventh century BC, coins carried engraved inscriptions, initially on one side and later on both sides. Apart from the

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name of the city – at first with the least possible letters –, usually on the reverse, or the name of the ruler, various complementary inscriptions and monograms were engraved in the field on both sides, references to the mint officials and symbols of control of the issue of specific series. Coin inscriptions, besides being elements of validation and authentication of the issuing authority, functioned also as a means of transmitting information by publicizing the name of the issuing authority to a wide geographical region, analogous of course with the ambit of circulation of the coins, and preserving it for posterity. On the other hand, apart from the traditional definition of money as a standard of value, as a medium of exchange and as a store of wealth, money, within the particular milieu in which it functioned each time, acquired a peculiar power, which had a special effect on the written word. This power was expressed by inspired texts that are landmarks in world literature.4 Coins and words, creations of human need for communication, forever in continuous dialogue, record history, become tools for transmitting knowledge of the past, proposing a performance that leads from the material to the spiritual world, and vice versa. Coins are History. Coins are People. This was the view cultivated initially in the Italian Renaissance from the fourteenth century, when the poet and scholar Petrarch (1304–1374) began being interested in Roman coins. Petrarch, as well as other of his contemporaries and colleagues, realized that the portraits of the Roman emperors, as these appear emblematically on the coins, are realistic representations of the illustrious men and began to use drawings of them to illustrate their writings, for decorative or evocative purposes. Indeed, through the ages, the narrative and pictorial language of old coins became an eyewitness of humanity’s past, a visual didactic discourse and an instrument of cultural transmission (translatio); they help people to approach actual events and beliefs of the past, to understand the stories described and depicted in papyri, manuscripts and books over time, as well as to become participants in those values or concepts that formed and inspired the intellectual vigilance and literary wealth of various periods. So, it is obvious that the exhibition Words and Coins attempts to create an artistic dialogue between written discourse and coins, so that the stories and the messages diffused through these are correlated and enhanced. The roles of each medium – coin, text – are examined in an interactive and interconnected framework. The fourteen units articulating the central idea of the exhibition, with thematic and chronological affinity, set the stage for minor histories of narration as well as histories of familiar human inquiries: the coding of these stories presupposes the activation of careful observation and active participation in the dialogue between discourse and image. Within the time machine, coins, manuscripts and books become precious tools for enhancing historical phases of the ancient Greek world, as well as of the Roman and, in continuation, the

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cat. nos 114, 121

cat. no. 91

cat. nos 25, 30 cat. nos 118, 125

cat. nos 38, 39

cat. nos 166, 171

cat. nos 23, 29

cat. nos 116, 123 cat. no. 180

Byzantine Empire. Indeed, the exhibition, as it transcends the significative limitations of its title, through the diachronic correlations of the coin with the manuscripts and books, covers equally the Renaissance and the subsequent period of the Enlightenment and the Modern Age. Hesiod’s Works and Days, the Homeric epics, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Boccaccio’s Genealogiæ Deorum gentilium, texts by Goethe, verses by the Alexandrian poet Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933), to confine ourselves to some of the exhibits of the written word, in dialogue with Orpheus and Eurydice, with the gods of Olympus who ordained the fortunes and works of men, with the protagonists of the Trojan War, with mystery deities of the East, with mythical animals such as the Chimaera, and mythical persons such as the Tegean Telephos, son of Heracles and Auge, who was left exposed on Mount Parthenion in Arcadia by his grandfather Aleus, son of Arcas, and was nurtured by a doe. In dialogue too, Heracles slaying the Lernaian Hydra on a coin of Nicopolis ad Istrum, with a miniature in the manuscript of Christine de Pisan, Epître d’Othéa (15th c.), which depicts the chivalrous hero in the midst of wild beasts and wielding a club with an equally forceful gesture . Further, the hero, vanquisher of Hades, fulfilling his last Labour, is represented carrying Cerberus to the Upper World on a coin of Perinthus, while a similar depiction illuminates the upper part of an initial letter from the narrative of Hercules Furens in a fifteenthcentury manuscript of Seneca’s Tragœdiae. Tragic figure in the lower part, struck down by the curse of Hera, he is shown killing his wife and children. And it is Bucephalus, the famous horse of Alexander the Great, which appears in half-body galloping towards the exit gateway, in a miniature with the birth of Alexander the Great in a fifteenth-century manuscript of Quintus Curtius’ Faits et gestes du grand Alexandre, and which seems to have leapt out of the circular flan of a bronze coin of Seleucus I Nicator (312–281 BC). Portraits of kings and rulers of Hellenistic Antiquity, as well as Roman emperors, imprinted on gold, silver and bronze coins, animate the content of Plutarch’s Vitae illustrium virorum or even function as identity photographs next to timeless tales telling of their deeds or to texts that are documents of their period. A gold aureus with the head of Julius Caesar accompanies the epic poem Pharsalia, referring to the Battle of Pharsalus fought in 48 BC near Pharsalus in Thessaly between Julius Caesar and the forces of the Roman Senate led by Pompey the Great. Coin portraits of emperor Hadrian frame the Renaissance surround of a miniature from a fifteenth-century manuscript with the work Romuleon, by Benvenuto da Imola, (14th century), which depicts a dying king handing the crown of authority to a child. The coins delimit the actual historical environment of the narrative, which recalls the legend of Trajan’s succession. Trajan who had no heir, wished to die without a descendant, following the example of Alexander the Great. However, his wife, Pompeia Plotina, is said to have introduced an impersonator into the bed of the deceased emperor, who adopted Hadrian as the legal heir of the imperial throne. And it is the book by M. Yourcenar, Mémoires d’Hadrien which describes in a modern manner the life and death of the Roman emperor Hadrian. The book is in the form of a letter to Hadrian’s eventual successor, Marcus Aurelius. The emperor meditates on his military triumphs, his love of poetry and music, philosophy, and his passion for the young Antinous, who after his untimely death is portrayed on a series of coins as a heroized youth. The bronze medallion of Constantine the Great refers to the new capital of the Roman Empire, on the European shore of the Propontis, on the site where the Megarian Byzas had

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founded a trading colony (emporium) in the seventh century BC. The solidus of Theodosios I accompanies the manuscript of the two military treatises, De rebus bellicis [and] Notitia dignitatum, written in the fourth or early fifth century, the first describing the different war machines then in use and the second drawing a picture of the empire’s military and administrative organization, as well as the Codex Theodosianus which, decreed by his grandson Theodosios II in 438, became one of the pillars of Roman Law. Next to Procopius’ history De Rebus Gothorum, Persarum ac Vandalorum projects the vigorous bust of Justinian, while the theological texts of John of ­Damascus complement coins of the iconoclast Byzantine emperors Constantine V and Michael II. Last, next to the Tetraevangelium (Four Gospels) are the coin of the period of Venetian rule with the lion, symbol of the Evangelist Mark who is depicted in the miniature, and the bronze coin of Basil I, who in 867 founded a long-lived dynasty which remained in power for 189 years, until the death of his great-great-great-granddaughter Theodora in 1056. The Macedonian ­dynasty is accredited with the most splendid period in the history of the Byzantine Empire. Under the leadership of able generals-emperors the Empire defeated the Arabs, subjugated the Bulgars, cleared the Mediterranean of corsairs, strengthened its position in southern Italy and spread Greek Orthodox Christianity to the Rus (989), while enjoying a heyday in learning, literature and the arts.

Coins and books are history, coins and books are people. History and people of a geographical unity, separated into states, each with different boundaries in the course of time, today united in its greater part at a monetary level. A mosaic of interconnected historical events, receiver and transmitter of ideas and spiritual inquiries between its constituent peoples, and not only, field of diverse oppositions then and now… And it is the myths that are never silent, that have the power to remain unchanged by current events and by historical hermeneutic approaches… And it is the myths which, the world over, in all ages and under whatever circumstances, were the living inspiration for all man’s mental activities, mainly for those expressed through art, either the art of discourse or the art of image. The head of the nymph Arethusa, with its chaste severity, surrounded by four dolphins, upon the tetradrachm of Syracuse, an image of highly delicate sensitivity, is perhaps an abstract yet at once an eloquent visual rendering of the primeval history linking the peoples of the Mediterranean, and not only. Arethusa, with curls escaping from the ribbon keeping her hair in place, under the pressure of the water, narrates superbly her adventure when the river-god Alpheus fell in love with her, before she was transformed into a spring on the island of Ortygia at Syracuse in Sicily. At the same time, she appears to leap out of Ovid’s Metamorphoses: ‘then Arethusa, once of Elis, whom Alpheus loved, lifted her head from her pool, and brushed the wet hair from her forehead, saying…’.5 Vasiliki Penna

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cat. no. 177

cat. nos 195, 204, 205 cat. nos 182, 188 cat. nos 193, 194, 203

cat. no. 183

cat. no. 63



* A complicated and arduous project such as the realization of the exhibition Words and Coins: from Ancient Greece to Byzantium consists the culmination of the efforts of many people, as it can be reflected in the credits of this book. Additionally, acknowledgements should include certain members of the staff of the Benaki Museum: special thanks are due for their contribution to Irine Papageorgiou, Angeliki Ziva and Panayiotis Papastavrou, as well as to Anastasia Drandaki and Mara Verikokou. The (KIKPE) coins and the other (Benaki) artefacts were conserved by Despina Kotzamani, Maria Zacharia, Georgia Karydi and Anthia Phoca in the Conservation Department of the Benaki Museum.

Notes 1.

Ch. Bode, ‘A Mercia of the Mind: Geoffrey Hill’s Mercian Hymns and the Poetical Transcendence of Time and Place’, in: L. Fietz et al. (eds), Regionalität, Nationalität und Internationalität in der zeitgenössischen Lyrik, Tübingen 1992, pp. 313-42 and esp. p. 332. 2. J. Buchan, Frozen Desir...