59, Lot: 32. Estimate $100. Sold for $74. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

MYSIA, Pergamon. Circa 133-67 BC. AR Cistophoric Tetradrachm (26mm, 12.63 gm). Cista mystica with serpent; all within ivy wreath / Bow-case with serpents, monogram to left, AM above, snake-entwined staff to right. SNG France 5, 1716; SNG von Aulock -. VF.

A Dionysiac ivy wreath surrounds the cista mystica or "mystic basket", which held the sacred serpent carried by young girls of high rank at public festivals and feasts in celebration of the mystic rites of Dionysos, a divinity particularly honoured by the kings of Pergamon. The reverse quiver was a symbol of Herakles. The serpents were symbols of the king because of their power, of time because of their length, and of rebirth or renewal, because of the shedding of their skins. Serpents played a central part in the mysteries of Dionysos in their role as protectors of the vine (by eating mice and other consumers of grapes). Owing to a reputation of never becoming ill, serpents were also symbols of health, as seen on the staff Asklepios. Due to their stealthy habit they were seen as the guardians of treasure, such as the quiver of Herakles. All of these qualities made serpents especially close to the heart of Eumenes.Cistophoric tetradrachms (‘basket bearers’) were struck on the theoretical weight standard of about 12.6 gm., slightly below the new Rhodian tetradrachm and approximately an Attic tridrachm (three-fourths of an Attic tetradrachm). The new royal coinage was imposed by Eumenes II on his subject cities with the intention of creating a closed economic area under central control some time after the treaty of Apameia in 188, possibly about 175 BC, and bear mintmarks and magistrates’ symbols which are merely subordinate to a federal coinage for the whole kingdom. Die linkage among the various issues may point to Pergamon as the central mint of issue or the producer of dies for distribution to the many federated cities which include: Ephesos, Tralles, Sardes, Sunnada, Apameia, Laodikeia, Thyateira, Apollonis and Stratonikeia.Eumenes II created a rich kingdom in western Asia Minor with its capital at Pergamon and became the guarantor of stability in the Roman interest. After the defeat of the Galatians in 184 the grateful Greeks called him Soter or ‘Saviour’ and extended the temple of Athena Nikephoros, commemorated on Attic weight tetradrachms until about 175, and made her festival pan-Hellenic. In the 170s BC Eumenes transformed Pergamon, from which our modern word ‘parchment’ derives, into one of the finest cities in the Greek world. This Hellenistic cultural capital produced -- with the assistance of massive gifts from Athens, Miletos, Delphi and Kos -- royal libraries second only to Alexandria and a school of Pergamene plastic art characterised by great realism and twisted bodies, the apogee of which is the Great Altar of Zeus, now the centrepiece of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. On the north frieze of the Great Altar a goddess ‘Nyx’ can be seen holding a ‘snake-pot’ similar to our cista mystica.  Attalos II Philadelphos succeeded his brother Eumenes in 158 BC, married his widow Stratonike, accepted Roman paramountcy and continued Eumenes’ building programme at Pergamon and the tradition of magnificent gifts to Greek cities and shrines such as the Stoa of Attalus at Athens. In 138 BC Attalos III, Philomater, succeeded to his father’s throne, and being childless on his death in 133, bequeathed the kingdom to Rome.After Pergamon lost its independence in 133 BC, cistophori, now the equivalent of three denarii, continued to be issued by the Roman governors of Asia Minor including the reluctant Cicero, Mark Antony, Octavian and his successor emperors down to the reign of Hadrian.