What do you make of this interesting medal I just got?

lordmarcovan

I thought it might be French, so I posted it on the Darkside, first. But I don't know for sure.

It came in a cheap swap today. My swap partner said he'd "make me happy", and he did. I just sent two cheap coin holders and he sent a bunch of coins AND this piece. I feel like I robbed him.

This thing is not in the best condition, but it's a neat design. Seems to be a soft white metal (lead? pewter?) under a copper coating.

Looks 19th century to me. It's heavy and really thick. (Scanned with USA cent for scale).

The inscription on the obverse (or what I am assuming to be the obverse) has the Roman numerals "LIV.III." at the top, with "IUNON EN VIEILLE" at the top of the monument and "OVID. / ...NASO" on the medallion being held by the seated figure.

The reverse merely has " . VII . " in the exergue.




(edited to fix my typos in the obverse legend).

TomB

That piece looks heavy enough that it might take $60 in postage all on its own!

lordmarcovan

It's heavy, to be sure, but is not as big in diameter as some. Just thick!

lordmarcovan

I thought "Vielle" might be some place in France, but Wikipedia says it is a stringed medieval instrument, similar to a violin. Hmm.

fc

Ovid was a prolific Roman poet whose writing influenced Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton. As those men knew, to understand the corpus of Greco-Roman mythology requires familiarity with Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Publius Ovidius Naso or Ovid was born in 43 B.C., in Sulmo, to an equestrian (moneyed class) family. His father took him and his older brother to Rome to study to become a public speaker and politician, but instead, Ovid put his rhetorical education to work in his poetic writing.

lordmarcovan

Thanks. I knew about Ovid, but didn't realize that "Naso" was part of his full name.

Guess there's no doubt about who's on the medallion, then. Not that I figured it was anyone else. You have pretty much solved the OVID and NASO inscriptions, but that leaves the IUNION EN VIELLE part and those numerals. Hmm.

fc

of course it is roman numbers... LIV is 54...
so i am trying to find in Ovid's book... a quote from LIV.III.


but google searching for that sort of stuff is hard.
check out his book FASTI.. the first few pages and how it is organized.

Text

fc

Later in the epic he singles out the figure of metaphor and asks why he cannot see Helen "as the sun saw her, with no Homeric shadow." This train of thought culminates in the question 'when would I enter that light beyond metaphor?' (VI.LIV.iii, p. 271). In Omeros, the sea is envisaged as a blank canvas of history, but without the margins of time, and without the rulings of metaphor.

fc

in your post you mis-spelt vieille... you had vielle which makes a big
difference. any other errors?

are you sure lunion is correct? seems to me it is IUNON

the union in old.

fc

i have to admit i would have to study latin/french and also read some
of ovid naso's writings to go further.

i tried searching based on symbolism.. like that lion.. but failed there
also.

lordmarcovan

<< <i> in your post you mis-spelt vieille... you had vielle which makes a big
difference. any other errors? >>

Yep. I mistyped "VIEILLE". Sorry.



<< <i>are you sure lunion is correct? seems to me it is IUNON >>

Yep. I botched that one, too.

What can I say, musta been close to my bedtime. Thanks for the work.

So it's a pretty safe guess that the allegorical symbols on this piece have something to do with Ovid's work, and the Roman numerals cite a specific passage. I would guess the two figures on the reverse are something from that passage, perhaps?

Wild theory #1- could this medal have been a school prize to award good scholarship, particularly in the Classics?

On the Darkside clone of this thread, Sapyx suggests that IUNON EN VIEILLE roughly translates to "Juno as an old woman".