I know the usual origin theories for the dollar symbol ($)- it’s usually related to Spanish New World coins, i.e. post 1492 A.D…
However, while I was looking for pictures of spintria, coins used in Roman brothels, never mind why, I noticed that there’s something that looks like a dollar sign in at least two of these coins.
Warning: though they’re almost 2,000 years old, the images on these coins are sexually explicit. (If you’re not familiar with how they worked: one side of the coin features a specific sexual act and the other side tells [in Roman numerals] how many coins that costs.) So, all disclaimers in place-
It doesn’t look like a symbol so much as an object in the scene being illustrated - certainly on the second coin, anyway, although the central placement on the first one makes a symbol perhaps more likely.
If it is a symbol, could it be a monogram of the designer or producer of the coin?
I’ve read of shows that featured bestiality, but I’ve never read of it in brothels. I think that’s two animals on that coin, though either way I don’t know what it means.
Apropos to the above, the Empress Theodora was said by Procopius (in his bitchy Secret History) to have had an act when she was still a young prostitute that involved her getting it on with a goose. And in one of the episodes of HBO’s Rome has this great moment (NSFW, but due to spoken of rather than seen bestiality).
Johanna, maybe that particular lapdance was for the VIP room, with mandatory bottle service
Actually I notice that in three of them the S is clean by itself (example1, example2,example 3) . In the ones the OP points out you can see it’s not really a “$”, but that the upstroke stops exactly at the centerpoint in the S, and continues below almost as far, ending in a serif. In two others (Handjob X and “ass-to-chest” XIII) one can see at the bottom edge very faintly some three letter inscription starting with “s”, So what is standard seems to be the “S” part. I would go with Telperion’s hypothesis, of an inconsistently applied mark to indicate spintria.
Off-topic, but the prices seem way off. It seems more like sex acts were numbered than each sex act had a specific monetary value. A handjob is ten? It’s more than a blowjob, or various kinds of penetration (as best I can tell from the pictures)?
Well, these coins are probably from different times and places. We’re likely to be stretching a point if we consider them to be on a common value scale. Not that it’s not fun to speculate, mind you.
So… Anyone realize that our very own Cecil Adams did an article on spintriae which addresses several of the questions raised in this thread? Not the dollar sign similarity, but the use, timeframe, etc. of the coins.
"I’ll take a number II combo and a number VI. Heavy on the olive oil. Oh, and a large grappa. Supersize the VI
Wonder what they had on the dollar menu.
