Transcript

ELTON BARKER: Hello, my name is Elton Barker. I'm a professor in Greek literature and culture at The Open University. And I'm joined here today with my colleague Emma.

EMMA BRIDGES: Hello, Elton. Thanks for having me. I'm also in the Department of Classical Studies at The Open University, where I'm a senior lecturer.

ELTON BARKER: And we're going to be using the short audio discussion today to address what a reader might have known about Croesus. To answer this question, we're going to be exploring two objects from the period.

So let's take a look at this first object. Emma, do you think you can describe it for us and just to give a give a sense of what it is that we're looking at here?

EMMA BRIDGES: It's sort of not quite round. It looks like it's made of some kind of shiny metal. I guess I would say it looks like it's made of gold. It's got quite fine detail on it as well. But I'd like to know ideally how big it is before I speculate on what it actually is.

ELTON BARKER: So the diameter, you'll be interested to know, is only 16 millimetres. So this is really quite a tiny object. And its weight is 8 grams.

EMMA BRIDGES: Yes, so that gives us a real clue, doesn't it, as to what this might be used for? And given the shape and the fact that it seems to be made of metal, I would ordinarily guess that something of that size might be quite likely to be a coin?

ELTON BARKER: Yeah, I think that's right. It's definitely going to be something in your hand, something you could easily fit into a pocket, let's say. And I think you're also really spot on to say-- I mean, particularly given now that we've realised that this is a very small object that we're looking at, the fine craftsmanship on it. And I want us to home in on that for a second now. What can you see here?

EMMA BRIDGES: So it's not immediately obvious until you start to look more closely at what exactly we can see on the image. But there's an image of two animals facing one another in profile. One of those animals is a lion. We can see it with its jaw wide open. And the animal on the other side, I would guess, with the horns, is perhaps a bull. The lion in particular, I'm aware, is associated with royalty in this context. And so that might tell us something about the provenance of the coin, where it came from and who produced it.

ELTON BARKER: And that is something I think, again, I want to just to dig into a bit more detail. And for that, let's turn the coin over. If we think of modern-day coins, for example, you'd often have the figure of the-- a representation of the person or the institution who is minting the coin. And then on the other side, you have some kind of writing.

EMMA BRIDGES: It's notable, to start with, that there isn't any actual writing that I can see on here. And actually, what the writing on a modern coin does sometimes is it tells us the value of that coin. So this leads me to think that this is actually some kind of stamp perhaps, which perhaps indicates maybe the consistent weight of a coin or perhaps the purity of the metal or maybe both of those things.

ELTON BARKER: That's a really good point. So we have here the guarantee of the coin's value, essentially. This implies, I think, of a very sophisticated state machinery.

EMMA BRIDGES: So I think we're getting to the kind of sense here that this is a coin from the mint of Croesus. It was actually minted in Sardis, which was the capital of Lydia, where Croesus ruled. And it dates from around the middle of the sixth century. So it's actually a piece of evidence, an object, a piece of what we would call material culture that is contemporaneous with when Croesus was actually on the throne.

ELTON BARKER: I think that's a really important point, that this is evidence that Croesus as a historical figure and shows the kind of figure that Croesus was and what he was known for. And on that subject, I was wondering if we could move on to the second object and use this as a point of comparison with the coin that we've just been discussing.

EMMA BRIDGES: Absolutely. So what I'm seeing here is a large two-handled vessel, a painted pot, which looks like it would be made of terracotta. And it's decorated with black paint work over the top of that and very fine detailed decoration. A two-handled pots like this is known as an amphora. This is the sort of object that would be used for storing and transporting liquids like maybe olive oil or wine.

The other interesting thing about this is the level of detail and the decoration. It's very finely decorated with a detailed image showing two figures. And I wonder if, Elton, I could hand over to you to talk a bit more about who those figures might be or what they're doing in the image.

ELTON BARKER: Thanks, yeah. You've set me a good challenge there. I see two figures. One figure is seated and is on top of some kind of construction and looking a bit more closely, it looks like a wooden construction. I'm seeing logs. I'm seeing layers of wood.

And then I see another figure bended in front of that seated person with a couple of sticks that are connected to this wooden structure. That second figure I just talked about, the one bending down in front, is naked to the waist, is barefoot, and very simply dressed.

The contrast couldn't be greater with the other figure. The seated figure is very finely dressed. He's holding a staff. He's seated on a throne. This looks to be like a king. In his other hand, he seems to be turning something over above the head of the figure in front of him.

EMMA BRIDGES: If we look a bit more closely, we can identify that there's also some writing on this pot. It's quite hard to see from the coloured images, but we do have it rendered in black and white, which actually gives a clearer sense of what that writing might say. And if we look closely at the writing to the side of the seated figure, well, that actually says Croesus' name in Greek capital letters.

ELTON BARKER: That's brilliant. Yes, I hadn't seen that before from that first image, but you're quite right. Once you almost turn the pot around in your hands and particularly once it's rendered in black and white and you get rid of the colour and the shine, you can clearly see those etchings. What's going on there? What is this moment in Croesus's life?

EMMA BRIDGES: This is the point at which Croesus is sent to die on the pyre. And actually, again, we can see from the black and white image that what seems to be happening with the figure who's bending over is that perhaps he's got some objects in his hand, which looks like he's probably lighting the pyre.

I'm seeing a laurel crown on the head of the seated figure. And he's also got something in his hand, which he seems perhaps to be pouring over either the pyre or the figure in front. And I wondered what you think might be going on there, Elton.

ELTON BARKER: It's quite clear that something seems to be pouring down from that object in his right hand, some kind of libation perhaps. It certainly seems to be contrasting with what you might expect that figure to be experiencing. I mean, he's seated on top of this wooden construction that's about to be set on fire, and yet he's seated there very calm, making this libation.

And I think that's interesting here because you mentioned this crown or this wreath that that figure has around his head. And I think, knowing that Apollo is in the scene here, we can easily see that as one of Apollo's key artifacts. We have this image of serenity and a real sense that the gods are going to look after him, that Apollo is going to intervene.

And that is one of the myths that Herodotus will be dealing with when he comes to his own narration of the Croesus episode. And you'll see in that narration how Herodotus provides a rather different spin on that episode.

EMMA BRIDGES: That's actually really interesting that even not long after his own lifetime, there were these different versions of Croesus' story and that this was being sort of visualised and later written about in different contexts, almost as though this historical figure had become a mythical version of himself, with different people creating different stories about him.

ELTON BARKER: That's a really interesting point, Emma. And in fact, that's what I was going to ask next actually. Can we date this image?

EMMA BRIDGES: This pot was found in Vulci, in what we now know as southern Italy. But we know it was made in Athens. And it dates to the first quarter of the fifth century BCE, so sometime between 500 and 475 BCE. So we can date it relatively precisely.

Now what's interesting about that is that, in comparison with the coin that we looked at earlier, which was from a period contemporary with Croesus himself, this is from a later date and from a very different location. So we're getting that sense already that Croesus and his story have already begun to travel through space and through time. And Herodotus, of course, is also part of that storytelling and that reversioning of Croesus' story.

ELTON BARKER: That's brilliant. I really like-- really love that idea that we have here essentially a foreign king who is being represented on a pot that's produced in Athens, and yet that pot is then found in an entirely different community in what is now southern Italy. I think you're absolutely right that here we get a real sense of the currency of the story of Croesus, one version of which we're going to learn more about in Herodotus.

Thank you so much, Emma, for leading me through these images. I learnt a lot. And I think it really shows the value of taking some time to look through the material cultural evidence more closely and in dialogue with the textual evidence.

EMMA BRIDGES: Absolutely. Thank you very much, Elton.