443, Lot: 29. Estimate $200. Sold for $120. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

MACEDON (Roman Protectorate), Republican period. Transitional bronze issue. Circa 167-165 BC. Æ (20.5mm, 9.61 g, 1h). Facing mask of Silenos, wearing ivy wreath / MAKE/ΔONΩN in two lines, D above; all within oak wreath. MacKay pl. III, 10; Touratsoglou, Macedonia 25; HGC 3, 1117 corr. (struck date); Psoma, Maroneia M320. VF, dark brown patina.

Very little is known about this attractive and interesting coin type. Originally attributed as an issue of the Roman official D. Julius Silanus, more recent scholarship, particularly hoard analyses, have made this untenable. The period to which it now belongs was marked by turmoil caused largely by various barbarian invasions, and coin production was sporadic at all of the Macedonian mints, and probably related to military activity. The Silenos type and oak wreaths were common local motifs used on coins in the Thraco-Macedonian region.

The low dating given in HGC is predicated upon the author’s acceptance of the low chronology of the issues of the quaestors C. Publilius and L. Fulcinnius (whose coins were overstruck by the present issue), after 148 BC. However, see T. R. S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, Vol. 3: Supplement (Oxford, 1986), p. 176, who places C. Publilius in 167 BC, thus confirming the high chronology (but see also E. Champlin’s review of Broughton in Classical Philology Vol. 84, No. 1, p. 59, n. 3, where the date of 167 is corrected to 168 BC).