The Column and Coinage of C. Duilius: Innovations in Iconography in Large and Small Media in the Middle Republic

Abstract

This examination of C. Duilius (consul in 260 BCE) and his achievements consists of a series of linked hypotheses, each suggested by direct evidence for Duilius' activities and contextualized by near-contemporary precedents (wherever possible) or relevant analogues from slightly later periods. Taken together, these hypotheses suggest that the elogium on Duilius’ rostral column may be read not only as an account of a capable commander who destroyed the myth of Carthaginian supremacy at sea, but also as an encomium on a generous benefactor to Rome’s citizenry. The inscription’s redactor successfully asserted Duilius’ preeminence among his peers, symbolized by the imagery and position of the rostral column commemorating his naval victory that was erected by order of the Senate and Roman people near the Comitium and Rostra. The cumulative evidence also suggests that the inscription’s reference to Duilius’ distribution of ‘naval booty’ to the Roman people involved the conversion of massive amounts of captured bronze, including the rostra removed from Punic ships, into “coinage,” i.e., the brick-sized aes signatum coins dated to c. 260 which bear naval imagery. Thus, by turning a mundane medium of exchange into a vehicle of propaganda through which his exploits and generosity could be ‘broadcast’, Duilius was able to reemphasize his new status as the first Roman celebrate a naval triumph. He could do this because the coins constituted a special triumphal/manubial issue under his authority, and he was therefore not subject to the constraints, real or implied, that kept Rome’s annual moneyers from issuing coins with personally significant types for another 125 years. His sudden emergence as a leading figure in Rome was rewarded with other honors, including a prestigious censorship in 258 and a perpetual personal honor, also bestowed by the SPQR, that allowed him to “triumph” to the end of his long life. 

Gaius Duilius has long been acknowledged as the first Roman to win a sea-battle, the first to celebrate a naval triumph, the first to be honored with a rostral column, and the first to present a gift derived from naval booty to the Roman people. Indeed, he came to be seen primarily as the man who set Rome on the road to maritime expansion and, ultimately, domination of the Mediterranean world. He was remembered also as the first (if not only) man to have a flute-player and wax-torch bearer accompany him home from feasts, as if he were perpetually triumphing. Now, we may add to Duilius’ list of firsts: he was the first politician to utilize Roman coinage to broadcast a new ideology of Rome’s (hoped for) naval greatness and dominance of the Mediterranean; he was also, it seems, the first Roman politician to use coinage as a medium for self-promotion, a century and a quarter before anyone would do it again.