Sale: CNG 79, Lot: 1225. Estimate $200.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 17 September 2008.  Sold For $320. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Time of Maximinus II. AD 310-313. Æ 15mm (1.14 g, 6h). Alexandria mint. Head of Serapis right, wearing modius / Nilus reclining left, holding reed and cradling cornucopia in arm; Γ//ALE. Van Heesch, Last, 6b. VF, rough desert patina.

J. van Heesch has provided the latest chronology for these anonymous civic bronzes of the fourth century AD. An active campaign of persecution against local Christians, abetted by Maximinus, reached its height in Nicomedia, Antioch, and Alexandria. Churches were closed and property was seized from Christians, who were expelled from many cities. The three major mint cities struck a series of small bronzes honoring the old Greco-Roman gods, Jupiter, Apollo, Tyche, and Serapis among them. The persecutions subsided in AD 313, possibly as a result of concerns expressed by Constantine and Licinius, the emperors in the west.