CNG 90, Lot: 948. Estimate $1500. Sold for $950. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

THRACE, Philippopolis. Caracalla. AD 198-217. Æ Medallion (41mm, 38.41 g, 7h). Alexandrian Pythian Games issue. Struck AD 215. Laureate heroic bust left, seen from behind, wearing aegis / Two laureate athletes standing left, raising hands to touch wreaths; between, third athlete standing left, bending to apply oil from urn set on ground before him. Klose & Stumpf -; Mouchmov, Phillipopolis 371; Mouchmov 5358; Varbanov 1408 (same dies as illustration). VF, green patina, overall roughness. Important and rare games type.

Ex Classical Numismatic Group 72 (14 June 2006), lot 1144 (hammer $1750).

The reverse of this medallion is one of many similar types struck by Philippopolis to commemorate the Pythian Games (τὰ Πύθια), one of the four Greek Panhellenic Games that occurred in the second year of each four-year Olympic cycle. Held in honor of Apollo, the god of arts and “civilization”, these games featured competitions for music and poetry in addition to feats of athletic skill, and were meant to evoke the best of Greco-Roman culture. This particular game in AD 215, coming as it did during Caracalla’s march east to fight the Persians, must have invested the event with further significance, since it now had the added epithet of Alexandrian. By situating the occurrence of these periodic games to such a crucial moment, the gods had signaled their approval, while the addition of their association to Alexander the Great might prove propitious for Caracalla’s own expedition against the Persians.