Maison Palombo
Auction 19 12 Dec 2020
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République romaine - C. Numonius Vaala
Denier - Rome (43).
Rarissime - Un des plus beaux exemplaires connus.
Exemplaire de la collection Arthur Bally (1849-1912), acheté le 9 août 1907 chez Leo Hamburger à Francfort pour 124 Francs et de la vente Münzen und Medaillen 93 du 16 décembre 2003, N° 57 et de la vente Roma 3 du 31 mars 2012, N° 389.
4.21g - Cr. 514/2 - Sear Imperator 322
Superbe à FDC - Choice AU*
This attractive type was copied under Trajan, circa AD 107, as part of his 'restitution' series (ref. RIC 812 / Woytek 841) which suggests that its beauty was still valued a century and a half after its strike. Republican coins often illustrate historical events of the moneyers' families, in which case the military action depicted on this type could be one of the Social War (91-88 BC), as it has been hypothesized that the gens Numonia originated from Campania and acquired Roman citizenship as a result of that war. The cognomen Vala/Vaala is believed to refer to one of the family members having received a corona vallaris as reward for being the first soldier to breach the palisade (vallum) of an enemy camp. Horace's fifteenth Epistle, dated circa 22 BC, is addressed to a Numonius Vala, with estates near Velia and Salerno, who is likely to be the same as the moneyer responsible for this emission. A later family member brought shame to the family, being recorded to have fled the battle field in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9: " Of the two prefects of the camp, Lucius Eggius furnished a precedent as noble as that of Ceionius was base, who, after the greater part of the army had perished, proposed its surrender, preferring to die by torture at the hands of the enemy than in battle. Vala Numonius, lieutenant of Varus, who, in the rest of his life, had been an inoffensive and an honourable man, also set a fearful example in that he left the infantry unprotected by the cavalry and in flight tried to reach the Rhine with his squadrons of horse. But fortune avenged his act, for he did not survive those whom he had abandoned, but died in the act of deserting them" (Velleius Paterculus Roman History II.119.4). This emission is traditionally dated to 41 BC, and, it has been noticed, the moneyer is depicted with some resemblance to the deified Julius Caesar as an act of allegiance. On another coin of Vaala, the portrait of Victory resembles that of Fulvia, the wife of Mark Antony, whilst the coins of M. Arrius Secundus give his ancestor the features of Octavian, and those of L. Servius Rufus those of Brutus. Such tactics would make sense in the context of the Perusine War, but B. Woytek argued that it was instead struck in 43 BC (Arma et Nummi, Vienna 2003, pp. 432 sqq. and 448 sqq.). Another uncertainty is whose portrait the coin actually shows: it has indeed been suggested that it could be that of Gaius Cassius Longinus, the murderer of Caesar (one of the three people deemed sinful enough to be chewed by Satan in Dante's Inferno, canto XXXIV) - in which case Vaala would try to support both sides at once!
Denier - Rome (43).
Rarissime - Un des plus beaux exemplaires connus.
Exemplaire de la collection Arthur Bally (1849-1912), acheté le 9 août 1907 chez Leo Hamburger à Francfort pour 124 Francs et de la vente Münzen und Medaillen 93 du 16 décembre 2003, N° 57 et de la vente Roma 3 du 31 mars 2012, N° 389.
4.21g - Cr. 514/2 - Sear Imperator 322
Superbe à FDC - Choice AU*
This attractive type was copied under Trajan, circa AD 107, as part of his 'restitution' series (ref. RIC 812 / Woytek 841) which suggests that its beauty was still valued a century and a half after its strike. Republican coins often illustrate historical events of the moneyers' families, in which case the military action depicted on this type could be one of the Social War (91-88 BC), as it has been hypothesized that the gens Numonia originated from Campania and acquired Roman citizenship as a result of that war. The cognomen Vala/Vaala is believed to refer to one of the family members having received a corona vallaris as reward for being the first soldier to breach the palisade (vallum) of an enemy camp. Horace's fifteenth Epistle, dated circa 22 BC, is addressed to a Numonius Vala, with estates near Velia and Salerno, who is likely to be the same as the moneyer responsible for this emission. A later family member brought shame to the family, being recorded to have fled the battle field in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9: " Of the two prefects of the camp, Lucius Eggius furnished a precedent as noble as that of Ceionius was base, who, after the greater part of the army had perished, proposed its surrender, preferring to die by torture at the hands of the enemy than in battle. Vala Numonius, lieutenant of Varus, who, in the rest of his life, had been an inoffensive and an honourable man, also set a fearful example in that he left the infantry unprotected by the cavalry and in flight tried to reach the Rhine with his squadrons of horse. But fortune avenged his act, for he did not survive those whom he had abandoned, but died in the act of deserting them" (Velleius Paterculus Roman History II.119.4). This emission is traditionally dated to 41 BC, and, it has been noticed, the moneyer is depicted with some resemblance to the deified Julius Caesar as an act of allegiance. On another coin of Vaala, the portrait of Victory resembles that of Fulvia, the wife of Mark Antony, whilst the coins of M. Arrius Secundus give his ancestor the features of Octavian, and those of L. Servius Rufus those of Brutus. Such tactics would make sense in the context of the Perusine War, but B. Woytek argued that it was instead struck in 43 BC (Arma et Nummi, Vienna 2003, pp. 432 sqq. and 448 sqq.). Another uncertainty is whose portrait the coin actually shows: it has indeed been suggested that it could be that of Gaius Cassius Longinus, the murderer of Caesar (one of the three people deemed sinful enough to be chewed by Satan in Dante's Inferno, canto XXXIV) - in which case Vaala would try to support both sides at once!