Question on Roman coats of arms and seals

[warburton]

I thought I would mine the wealth of knowledge here, if you will indulge me.

Does anyone know if Romans had an equivalent of what we would call a coat of arms - that is, an icon or symbol that identifies a noble man or family (like the eagle and SPQR identifies the government of Rome, for example, or particular legions had an icon on their vexillum that identified them).

I have read up some books on heraldry, and a lot on Rome and the Romans, but have not found anything discussing this.

I know Romans would have had seals for sealing the wax on a letter or for sealing official documents (as we, at least in common law systems, still sign documents "under seal" today, such as wills, deeds, etc). I have not found a photo of what such a seal would have looked like, and I would be interested if anyone has one, or a link to one.

I know a formal system of heraldry did not exist at this time, but I would be interested for an upcoming project (Roman and Italian civil wars in the time of Marius and Sulla through to Caesar and Pompey).

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

[mr ed]

The closest you'll come to this is probably to look at the coins issued during the Mid to late Republic before they became the privilege of the Emperors. during this period they were issued by the Tres Viri Monetalis, junior elected magistrates. They chose the imagery on the coins, and as such there's a lot of political iconography going on, either to promote themselves and their own families, or other senior magistrates and individuals to whom their interests were aligned.

Of course, while some of these represented things like claims to descent from gods, or puns on names etc, a lot of the stuff was more contemporary refernces to action of the individuals - Brutus issued them with daggeers to commemorate his assassination of Caesar, Caesar issued coins with Elephants after his victory at Thapsus.

Wiki has a useful summary as a starting point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Republican_currency#Coinage_and_political_messages

[warburton]

I think you might be right. Thank you for your helpful response, Mr. Ed.

It was just a curiosity more than anything - I wasn't sure there would be an answer!

[mr ed]

Of ocurse for a bit of fun you could cgo with Medieval attributed arms

Caesar




Alexander


Penthesilea



Jesus



Satan

[dm]

Have seen a Roman seal impression in lead found in Lincolnshire in the 1990's which had dieity/ God riding on a dolphins back on it. Other Roman seal impressions from across the Empire do exist but they are fairly rare finds and if they belonged to individuals or to a state office is open to speculation.

[Mad Doc Morris]

Nothing substantial to add, just…

I know Romans would have had seals for sealing the wax on a letter or for sealing official documents (as we, at least in common law systems, still sign documents "under seal" today, such as wills, deeds, etc). I have not found a photo of what such a seal would have looked like, and I would be interested if anyone has one, or a link to one.

The phrase "Roman seal" generated quite a few hits in Google's image search. Use with caution, various fakes around, but a starting point nevertheless. However, I wouldn't expect anything clearly related to a certain family. mr ed's advice regarding coinage is still your best bet there.

[warburton]

Thanks for the responses, all.

I did do a Google image search, which on some inspection had a lot of ideas, but little actual verified seals.

But all responses have been very helpful. Much appreciated.

[mr ed]

The trick with looking for this sort of stuff on google is to add a trusted authority as extra search term for your image search  -"British Museum Roman Signet Ring" or "Louvre Greek Helmet" give much better results than "Roman Seal"

It's not bulletproof as a system, but it weeds out the worst of the dodgy reproduction noise and crap ebay stuff if you're looking for images of original artifacts.

Plus, stating the obvious, it's the signet rings that survive rather than the seals themselves so you'll find more looking for them.

[A Lot of Gaul]

This site has some information on Roman signet rings:
http://www.heraldicrings.com/Signet_Rings_History2.html

Pliny on the signet rings of Augustus and others:
http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=PerseusLatinTexts&query=Plin.%20Nat.%2037.4&getid=1

And some coin images...

Denarius of Caesar with armed Venus:



Denarius of Caesar with bull:



Aureus of Augustus with sphinx:



Hope this helps a bit!

Cheers,
Scott

[warburton]

Very useful; thank you very much!