¿Un foedus entre Roma y Sagunto? La dracma hispana del juramento

Abstract

The discovery in Spain of an emission of Roman drachms (half a quadrigate) from the time of the Scipios, representing a scene with the swearing of a foedus allows us to trace back the history of this exclusively republican iconography, which appeared at the end of the III century B.C. and lasted until the beginning of the I century A. D. Leerzeichen nach A. einfügen represented in coins, gems and wares. The scene in the Hispanic drachma illustrates the foedus between Rome and an indigenous community, sworn between the pater patratus and an Iberian with a high social status, according to the gowns he is wearing. The data we have regarding pacts during the first moments of the conquest seem to indicate that the only city which would have enough ideological impact to be involved in such a scene would be Sagunto. The attack and capture of Sagunto by Hannibal in the year 218 B. C., subjugating a city allied to Rome, lead to the involvement of the Scipios, Publius and Cneus, against the Carthaginians in the Iberia, who liberated the city in the year 212 B. C. It is possible that then, during the moment of these events, or possibly during the times of Scipio the African, when there are references to the pact in silver minting carried out by Rome in Hispania, pact that was origin and cause of the Second Punic War. The parallels of the iconography of this coin emission are found in the Roman ›Oath‹ aureus, which gives a very precise chronology of the Hispanic
emission, between 218 when the Scipios entered Hispania, 212 when Saguntum was recovered, and 209 when Carthage fell to the hands of Scipio the African, who may have commemorated the actions of his father and uncle as an already mythical event. The minting of the emission of the coins is clearly from Hispania due to the high quality of the silver, the exclusive finding in Spain and the classic gowns worn by the Iberian who is making the oath with Rome. Its emission in Sagunto itself is confirmed thanks to the choice of coining drachmas of halfquadrigate, similar and interchangeable with the coetaneous Saguntian drachms.