An Enigma

294, Lot: 997. Estimate $3000. Sold for $3500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

IONIA, League of Thirteen Cities. Commodus. AD 177-192. Æ Medallion (47mm, 54.28 g, 6h). Marcus Claudius Fronto, asiarch and high priest of the Thirteen Cities. M AV KOMMOΔOC CEBACTOC HΛIOC HPAKΛ RΩMAI AV KA (Marcus Aurelius Commodus Augustus Sol Hercules Romanus Imperator Caesar), laureate and cuirassed bust left, wearing lion’s skin tied around neck, the head of which rests on the emperor’s near shoulder / ACIAC ΠPOTΩN EΦECIΩN ΠEPΓAMHNΩN, KOINON ΓΙ ΠOΛΕΩΝ/ ΠΡOM K Λ ΦPONTΩ/N (Of the leading citizens of Asia, Ephesians (and) Pergamenes, Commonwealth of the Thirteen Cities, by direction of Marcus Claudius Fronto), Hercules seated left on rock draped with his lion’s skin, his club at his side, taking the hand of Auge, nude to the waist, standing facing, her head right; quiver with arrows to far left. RPC Online –; J.U. Gillespie, “KOINON IΓ ΠOΛEΩN: A study of the coinage of the Ionian League,” RBN (1956), 25 (this medallion; noted as “forgery[?]”) and cf. 12-13 (Antoninus Pius; for rev. type); U. Kampmann, “Eine gemeinsame Emission der Städte Pergamon und Ephesos für das Koinon der 13 ionischen Städte. Beiträge des Münzhandels zur Imperialforschung,” International Kolloquium zur kaiserzeitlichen Münzprägung Kleinasiens [Nomismata 1] (Milan, 1997), p. 86, note 12; cf. SNG France 2174 = von Fritze, Pergamon pl. VI, 10 (for rev. type); Kraft –; cf. Tkalec (29 February 2012), lot 128 (Cyzicus; for bust type). Near EF, two-toned olive and forest green patina with some bare metal showing through, fields smoothed, details strengthened. Unique. LOT SOLD AS IS, NO RETURNS.

Ex Gorny & Mosch 196 (7 March 2011), lot 3202; Richard J. Graham Collection (Schulman 243, 8 June 1966), lot 2485; Collection of Prince Christian August of Waldeck and Pyrmont (Münzhandlung Basel 3, 4 March 1935), lot 620.

This medallion of Commodus, with a pedigree dating back to the collection of Christian August, Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont (1744-1798), is nothing short of an enigma. Although considered genuine when it was sold with the rest of the Waldeck collection in 1935 by Münzhandlung Basel, and again in 1966 by J. Schulman – this time as part of the Richard J. Graham collection, others have had cause to doubt its authenticity. Gillespie, in his catalog of the Koinon issues, ended his description of this medallion with the phrase, “Forgery?”. Kampman also had doubts about this medallion’s authenticity, noting that, while H.A. Cahn had declared it “definitely genuine”, the medallion’s reverse type and legend were the chief elements in arguing against its authenticity, since it matched exactly a homonoia issue of the same type and magistrate struck under Antoninus Pius. This issue of Pius can be dated to no later than AD 161, since it was part of a larger group of the same magistrate that included issues of Marcus Aurelius as Caesar. Although the obverse portrait of our medallion does bear a striking similarity to an issue of the Commodus from Cyzicus, the medallion must be dated to at least AD 192 because of the portrait’s obvious Herculean imagery (echoed on the reverse as well). Therefore, it is the existence of a magistrate of exactly the same name, holding the exact same office at least thirty years after holding it the first time, that is the most questionable aspect.

Leschhorn cited four examples (all from the Koinon of Ionia) where M. Claudius Fronto is cited as asiarch and high priest of the 13 cities: SNG von Aulock 7811 and 7814 (Antoninus Pius) and 7815 (Marcus Aurelius as Caesar), and SNG Tübingen 2757 = BMC 2 (Antoninus Pius). Gillespie noted that there was an M. Claudiuis Fronto who could have been the individual mentioned on this medallion. Gillespie argued, however, that the historical Fonto, seemed to spend much of his career in Dacia and Moesia and other parts of the empire rather than Ionia. It was also unusual (according to Gillespie) that Fronto would have been promoted to very high positions after holding the priesthood in Ionia. Furthermore, the historical Fronto probably died sometime around AD 170. Unable to reconcile conclusively who the medallion’s Fronto was (given the last inconsistency), Gillespie unconvincingly suggests that the Commodus medallion was a purely commemorative piece, taking the reverse as its type due to the impressiveness of the design. Kampmann was clearly bothered by the the appearance of the same magistrate after a lapse of thirty years. If the latter individual were a relative of the former (like a grandson), why then did he not want to distinguish himself from his ancestor by the inclusion of the cognomen νεώτερος (the younger) in the legend? A fact within the realm of extreme possibilty, since it is very unlikely that the Fronto of the Commodus and Antoninus Pius medallions were one and the same person.

In addition to the anomaly of an almost thirty-year hiatus in the use of the reverse (complete with the same legend), the style of this medallion's reverse, when taken in comparison with those other known examples of the type published in Gillespie, is flatter and less refined. The head of the lion skin, visible on the illustrated examples, is completely non-existent on the Commodus medallion. Instead, it is replaced by a thick and clunky club.

The reverse legend is also troublesome. Normally in Greek, the arrangement of numbers follows the pattern of tens followed by single digits. Thus, 13 would be rendered in Greek alphanumerically as ΙΓ. On this reverse type, however, the numeral has been rendered in the highly unusual form of Γ followed by I. Whoever cut the reverse of the Commodus medallion, unaware of the unusual numbering, but based on his own reading of the original, converted the Γ to a T – a change visible under close inspection with a lens, but unnoticed by both Gillespie and Kampmann.

The obverse derives from a known (though poorly preserved) type from Cyzicus (SNG France 759), which served as the model for the medal. The fineness of the Commodus medallion's obverse seems rather odd when one compares it to the flatter strike of the reverse, since medallions were normally meant to be presentation pieces and allowances were made in striking such large and highly detailed objects.

Very probably the purpose of this medallion was to provide a numismatic example of Commodus in his persona of Hercules for his collecting patron. The portrait on the Cyzicus coin was a highly artistic rendering, and so one of the then-extant specimens of this coin served as the model for the obverse. The reverse would seem appropriate as well with its obvious Herculean imagery. The problem, however, is that the maker used a reverse design quite probably based on an available line drawing of the reverse only, since, at the time, numismatic manuals were illustrated with line drawings of one side only, and often made no connection between appropriate obverse and reverse. Thus, the maker was unaware of the non-Commodus obverse with this particular reverse type. He was also unaware of (or unconcerned with) the Greek legend, since the design was what mattered more to a potential eighteenth century collector of means.