Colossians, Hierapolitan Coins-and the Young Bearers of Hope
Colossians, Hierapolitan Coins—and the Young Bearers of Hope Ulrich Huttner At about the same time when Paul was in contact with the Christian community at Colossae, perhaps some years before, M. Syillios (Suillius)
Antiochos, who held the post of a grammateus in Hierapolis, had the responsibility of issuing a series of coins (RPC 1.2969–2973) to celebrate the reigning emperor Claudius together with his sons, Britannicus, his own son, and Nero, who had been adopted in 50 CE.1 Antiochos had kept good relations with senatorial circles, since at the beginning of the fifties
P. Suillius Rufus, the then governor of Asia, had rewarded the excellent notable from Hierapolis with Roman citizenship.2
Five pieces belong to the series of coins.3 On the obverse of two of them can be seen the laureate portrait of Claudius, while the reverse shows the god of Hierapolis: Apollo, one classical version with the lyra and another indigenous version with the double axe.4 On the next two coins can be found the portraits of the princes: Britannicus, about ten
Thanks to Julien Ogereau for improving my English.
1. For dating the Letter to Philemon, see Ulrich Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, trans. David Green, AJEC 85; Early Christianity in Asia Minor 1 (Leiden:
Brill, 2013), 98–102: during the 50s or early 60s of the first century.
2. On P. Suillius Rufus, see Werner Eck, "Suillius 3," DNP 11:1092–93; Steven H.
Rutledge, Imperial Inquisitions: Prosecutors and Informants from Tiberius to Domitian
(London: Routledge, 2001), 270–1; PIR 7.22 (2006): 357–58. For the grant of Roman citizenship by the governor, see Bernard Holtheide, Römische Bürgerrechtspolitik und römische Neubürger in der Provinz Asia (Freiburg: Hochschulverlag, 1983), 20. In the case of M. Suillius Antiochos, Holtheide (Römische Bürgerrechtspolitik, 66) thinks of the influence of M. Suillius Nerullinus (cos. 50), the son of P. Suillius Rufus.
3. See the appendix to this chapter.
4. On different forms of Apollo in Hierapolis, see Saskia Kerschbaum, "Die Apol-
Ulrich Huttner years old, and Nero—some years older. They have the faces of boys, while the reverses display cultic motifs: two crowns on a table—the prizes of festival games—and a double axe. The most interesting is the fifth coin, by which the members of the imperial family are both paired with the patron deity and divinized. On the obverse is a head of the god Apollo framed by the name of Suillius, while the reverse represents the front of a temple with six columns and some unidentified figure in the gable. The legend hints at the dedication of the sanctuary: Γένει Σεβαστῶν—"to the family of the Augusti" (RPC 1.2973).5 This is a little bit difficult to interpret, as Claudius is not given the title "Augustus" on the above-mentioned coins, and neither
Britannicus nor Nero bore the title in these years at all.6 In spite of these inconsistencies there cannot be any doubt that the members of the Claudian dynasty were caught up in the aura of sacred reverence dedicated to the first emperors and descending from Augustus. The significance of such temple-buildings in the urban landscape is not to be underestimated: they were monumental examples of the imperial orientation of the cities looking for a place in the political and cultural system of the Roman Empire over which a person with the title of Augustus reigned single-handedly.7
Looking at these coins, one can find more than one reference to the text of Colossians composed some years later, soon after the death of Paul during the 60s.8 During the second, and, above all, during the third century, agonistic motifs on coins were quite normal, but not in the first century.9 We may conclude that the emblem on the Hierapolis coin was a peculiar representation of a rather special agonistic self-confidence in the Lycus Valley. In several passages of Colossians we read metaphors about Greek games (Col
1:29–2:1; 4:12). This is expressed in particular by the word καταβραβεύειν lines von Hierapolis in Phrygien," Jahrbuch für Numismatik und Geldgeschichte 64
(2014): 29–30.
5. Additionally, BMC Phrygia p. 229 n. 11; Simon R. F. Price, Rituals and Power:
The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 264 n. 85; Kerschbaum, "Die Apollines von Hierapolis in Phrygien," 40 n. 5.
6. Dietmar Kienast, Römische Kaisertabelle. Grundzüge einer römischen Kaiserchronologie, 2nd ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996), 93 and 96.
7. Harry O. Maier, Picturing Paul in Empire: Imperial Image, Text and Persuasion in Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 2. See also Price, Rituals and Power, 156–62.
8. Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus-Valley, 113–14.
9. See Wolfgang Leschhorn, "Die Verbreitung von Agonen in den östlichen Provinzen des Römischen Reiches," Stadion 24 (1998): 31–58.
Colossians, Hierapolitan Coins—and the Young Bearers of Hope
used to warn against the authority of the followers of the angels (Col 2:18).10
The table with the prize crowns would have been part of the symbolic imagery associated with the metaphoric language in Colossians.
Taking the series of five coins issued by Antiochos together, the Hierapolitans perceived a message of trust that can be set in contrast to the message of Colossians: young imperial hope bearers, Nero and Britannicus, took their positions at the side of their father Claudius and also at the side of the familiar Apollo. As divinized members of the imperial family they became prominent figures in the religious and cultic life of Hierapolis. They were young and mighty gods, just like Jesus Christ.
During the years before his accession Nero gained the favor of Greek communities by representing their interests.11 Apamea, east of Hierapolis, had been destroyed by an earthquake, and it was the prince's public pronouncement in Greek language that exempted the town from taxes
(Tacitus, Ann. 12.58, with Suetonius, Nero 7.2.). At the same time in Apollonia Salbake, to the south of the Lycus Valley, young Nero had already his own priest.12 How intensely had hope been placed on Nero is indicated by Seneca some years later, who celebrated him as the new star a short time after Claudius had died in autumn 54. In the Apocolocyntosis, Seneca's sarcastic pamphlet on the dead emperor, the god Apollo sings verses of hope for the young successor who would provide for a golden future: let the duration of human life be surpassed by him who is my like in looks and grace, and my equal in voice and song. He will guarantee an era of prosperity to the weary and break the silence of the laws. Like the Morning Star, as he rises scattering the stars in flight, or like the Evening
Star, as he rises when the stars return, like the gleaming Sun, as soon as rosy Dawn has dispelled the shadows and led in the day, as he gazes on the world and begins to whip up his chariot from the starting barrier: such a Caesar is at hand, such a Nero shall Rome now gaze upon. His
10. See Lukas Bormann, Der Brief des Paulus an die Kolosser, THKNT 10.1
(Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2012), 143. On βραβευτής in agonistic contexts, see Christof Schuler, Ländliche Siedlungen und Gemeinden im hellenistischen und römischen Kleinasien, Vestigia 50 (Munich: Beck, 1998), 238–39.
11. Christopher Jones, "Nero Speaking," Harvard Studies of Classical Philology 100 (2000): 453–54.
12. MAMA 6.156. See Jakob Munk Højte, Roman Imperial Statue Bases from Augustus to Commodus (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2005), 325–26.
Ulrich Huttner radiant face blazes with gentle brilliance and his shapely neck with flowing hair. (Seneca, Apol. 4.21–32 [Eden])
The sixteen-year-old youth was able to play the part of the youthful god of light: Nero was Apollo.
Seneca's verses on Nero belong to a tradition of celebrating messiahlike boys that dates to the beginnings of the Principate—a tradition that has been retraced in a masterly manner by Eduard Norden in his famous book Die Geburt des Kindes: Geschichte einer religiösen Idee.13 One of the paradigmatic poems expressing the hope of a newborn divine prince was written by Virgil in 40 BCE with his fourth eclogue announcing a new era full of peace and happiness. Here also we find Apollo taking the world under his wings (Ecl. 4.10). Nobody knows whom Virgil meant with the figure of the divine boy (puer), however, as specialists have not succeeded in identifying that bearer of hope.14 But it is clear that in the first decades of the Principate, similar hopes were placed on young members of the emperor's family again and again.15 The trail of Virgil's fourth eclogue is followed up by Calpurnius Siculus, who glorifies a youthful peacemaker as well, and there are good reasons to identify this peacemaker with Nero receiving imperial government in 54 (Ecl. 1.42–88; 4.84–159).16
In Colossians, God's son "is the image of the invisible God" (εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ἀοράτου, 1:15). On the coins the contemporaries became aware of a visible god, that is, the emperor Claudius, and of two divine princes, visible as well, and one can ask with good reason, whether people did not recognize the image of Christ in the portraits of Britannicus and Nero, two rather normal, well-behaved boys, but without doubt great bearers
13. Eduard Norden, Die Geburt des Kindes: Geschichte einer religiösen Idee (Leipzig: Teubner, 1924).
14. Most reasonable seems the solution of Karl Galinsky, Augustan Culture: An Interpretive Introduction (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 92: "The miraculous child ultimately is no more than a symbol or personification of the new age."
15. See Andreas Alföldi, "Der neue Weltherrscher der Vierten Ekloge Vergils," in Saeculum Augustum II: Religion und Literatur, ed. Gerhard Binder (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988), 210–12.
16. For dating the first Eclogue, see Joachim Fugmann, "Nero oder Severus Alexander? Zur Datierung der Eklogen des Calpurnius Siculus," Philologus 136 (1992):
202–4; on both John Garthwaite and Beatrice Martin, "Visions of Gold: Hopes for the New Age in Calpurnius Siculus' 'Eclogues,'" in Writing Politics in Imperial Rome, ed.
William J. Dominik, John Garthwaite, and Paul A. Roche (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 307–8.
Colossians, Hierapolitan Coins—and the Young Bearers of Hope
of hope in the eyes of the observer. So one can discover points of reference in the visual culture to create a new idea of the relation between God and God's son. Harry Maier reminds us that "Paul represents his teachings with the help of imperial image and vocabulary, often only to reconfigure it."17 It is clear that the listeners and readers interpreted Pauline texts also
"with the help of imperial image and vocabulary," so that we can ask the question whether now and then people's minds would not have provided
Jesus Christ with the features of an imperial prince. Paul's addressees were beyond his control, and he did not constantly take into account the divergence between christological monotheism and imperial divinization.18
One last remark on M. Sullius Antiochus's coin series in Hierapolis. It may be surprising that this is a purely male series. Agrippina, the empress and symbol of concord of the imperial family,19 is missing. Presumably it would be too far-fetched to make a connection with the missing reference to male and female in Colossians' enumeration of the opposite identities that will be dissolved by Jesus Christ: gentile versus Jew, circumcised versus uncircumcised, barbarian versus Scythian, slave versus free (Col
3:11), but not male versus female as in Galatians (Gal 3:28). We should not exclude the possibility that Agrippina's portrait was part of the series as well and that no specimen has been discovered until now, since evidence for the Britannicus-type is constituted only by a single coin in the collections of Oxford (RPC 1.2971).
Appendix: RPC 1.2969–2973:
Series of coins in Hierapolis (ca. 50–54, M. Suillios Antiochos):
Obv.: ΚΛΑΥΔΙΟΣ ΚΑΙΣΑΡ; laureate head, r.
Rev.: Μ ΣΥΙΛΛΙΟΣ ΑΝΤΙΟΧΟΣ ΓΡΑ ΙΕΡΑΠΟΛΙΤΩΝ; Apollo, standing r., playing lyre 17. Maier, Picturing Paul in Empire, 40. For similar considerations on Luke in the context of the imperial symbolic language of the golden age, see Stefan Schreiber,
"Goldene Zeiten? Politische Perspektiven der lukanischen Geburtsgeschichte," in Neues Testament und politische Theorie: Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zur Zukunft des Politischen, ed. Eckart Reinmuth (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2011), 83–97.
18. Maier, Picturing Paul in Empire, 82.
19. See Anthony A. Barrett, Agrippina: Sex, Power, and Politics in the Early Empire
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 108–10; Maier, Picturing Paul in Empire, 95–96.
Ulrich Huttner
Obv.: ΚΛΑΥΔΙΟΣ ΚΑΙΣΑΡ; laureate head, r.
Rev.: Μ ΣΥΙΛΛΙΟΣ ΑΝΤΙΟΧΟΣ ΓΡΑ ΙΕΡΑΠΟΛΙΤΩΝ; Apollo, on horseback, r., with double axe
Obv.: ΒΡΙΤΑΝΝΙΚΟΣ ΚΑΙΣΑΡ; draped bust of Britannicus, r.
Rev.: ΣΥΙΛΛΙΟΣ ΑΝΤΙΟΧΟΣ ΙΕΡΑΠΟΛΙΤΩΝ; table with two crowns; to r., palm branch
Obv.: ΝΕΡΩΝ ΚΑΙΣΑΡ; draped bust of Nero, r.
Rev.: ΣΥΙΛΛΙΟΣ ΑΝΤΙΟΧΟΣ ΙΕΡΑΠΟΛΙΤΩΝ; double axe on basis, with snake coiled around and surmounted by radiate head (?)
Rev.: ΓΕΝΕΙ ΣΕΒΑΣΤΩΝ; temple with six columns Bibliography Alföldi, Andreas. "Der neue Weltherrscher der Vierten Ekloge Vergils."
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