Sale: Triton VI, Lot: 196. Estimate $4000.  Closing Date: Monday, 13 January 2003.  Sold For $3500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

KINGS of MACEDON. Perseus. 178-168 BC. AR Tetradrachm (16.60 gm). Diademed head of Perseus right; ZWILOU below / BASI-LEWS PER-SEWS, eagle standing right on thunderbolt; two monograms right; all within laurel wreath, star below wreath. Mamroth, Perseus 1; SNG Copenhagen -; SNG Ashmolean -; De Luynes 1712; Hunterian pg. 346, 5. Good VF, well centered, some minor roughness. Rare. ($4000)

The obverse signature, Zoilou ("of Zoilos"), is that of perhaps the chief commissioner of the mint, or finance minister, of both Philip V and his son Perseus, since he signs dies in full (in this unique instance), abbreviated form, or monogram, for both rulers. Given the exceptional quality and unreduced weight of this emission, it may reasonably be assumed to have been a coronation or donative issue. Zoilus, whose name last appears as S - W, patronymic(?) to ERMIAS signing the innovative tetrobols or pseudo-Rhodian drachms of the Larissa 1968 hoard (Price, Essays Morkholm 1989, pg. 241), laid down a few years after Perseus’ final defeat by the Romans at Pydna in 168, seems to have been, especially in the light of his perhaps unparalleled prominence on our coin, the eminence grise of the Macedonian kingdom. His numismatic activities are in part analogous, though in an honourable way, to those of the rebellious minister Tryphon, guardian of Antiochus VI of Syria, a generation later, who is also to be found signing his master’s dies.