Thalia, the Muse of Comedy

238, Lot: 338. Estimate $150. Sold for $460. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Q. Pomponius Musa. 56 BC. AR Denarius (17mm, 3.90 g, 4h). Rome mint. Laureate head of Apollo right; sandal to left / Thalia, the Muse of comedy, standing left, holding comic mask and leaning arm on column. Crawford 410/9b; Sydenham 821; Pomponia 19. Good VF, toned, a few marks under tone.

Although the moneyer Q. Pomponius Musa is unknown to history, his choice of Hercules Musarum and the nine Muses as coin types is remarkable and clearly connected to his cognomen.

This series of coin types, Hercules playing the lyre and the Muses, can be no other than the celebrated statue group by an unknown Greek artist, taken from Ambracia and placed in the Aedes Herculis Musarum, erected by M. Fulvius Nobilior in 187 BC after the capture of Ambracia in 189 BC (Plin. NH xxxv.66; Ov. Fast. vi.812). By the second century BC Rome had overrun most of Greece and was captivated by Hellenic art and culture, not the least statuary. Fulvius is said to have taken the statues to Rome because he learned in Greece that Hercules was a musagetes (leader of the Muses). Thalia, as Muse of Comedy, would have been behind the works of Roman playwrights such as Plautus.

Remains of this temple have been found in the area of the Circus Flaminius close to the south-west part of the circus itself, and north-west of the porticus Octaviae. An inscription found nearby, ‘M. Fulvius M. f. Ser. n. Nobilior cos. Ambracia cepit;’ may have been on the pedestal of one of the statues. The official name of the temple was Herculis Musarum aedes, which Servius and Plutarch called Herculis et Musarum ades.