265, Lot: 275. Estimate $150. Sold for $240. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SYRIA, Coele-Syria. Damascus. Otacilia Severa. Augusta, AD 244-249. Æ (29mm, 21.87 g, 12h). Draped bust right, wearing stephane / Turreted and draped bust of Tyche within tetrastyle aedicule; to either side, female figure holding temple containing eagle above head; in exergue, ram leaping right, head left. De Saulcy 4; Rosenberger 38 (same obv. die). Fine, green and red patina. Rare.

The aedicule with the bust of Tyche has a characteristic roof-line that appears on earlier Severan issues and must reflect the actual appearance of a monument in Damascus. Rosenberger referred to the structures that the female figures hold as cages containing animals. While such a description is charmingly enticing (one wants to even see the figures in the “cages” as elephants), a much more plausible solution is to interpret them as eagles within temples. Struck for both Philip I and Otacilia, the type shows the temples without fully depicting the roof, a detail that very much recalls the similar temples with eagles found on certain issues of Rhesaena under Trebonianus Gallus.