Sale: CNG 60, Lot: 1221. Estimate $150.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 22 May 2002.  Sold For $110. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

CORINTH. Nero. 54-68 AD. Æ 19mm (6.88 gm). Struck 57-8 or 58-9 AD. Ti. Claudius Optatus and C. Julius Polyaenus, duovirs. Bare head right / ISTH/MIA in two lines within wreath of wild celery; COR below. RPC I 1202; SNG Copenhagen 241 var. Fine, brown patina, light porosity. ($150)

This coin commemorates the Isthmian games held every two years by the Corinthians to honor the god Poseidon. The games were pan-Hellenic in scope and constituted one of the four circuit events, the others being the Olympic, Pythian and Nemean games. If an athlete won a wreath at each of these venues in a four-year cycle, he was titled a periodonikes, or 'circuit victor'. By the time of Domitian, the wild celery wreath prize at the Isthmian games was changed to a pine wreath.