Sale: CNG 64, Lot: 705. Estimate $1000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 24 September 2003.  Sold For $1000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

CILICIA, Tarsus. Severus Alexander. 222-235 AD. Æ 44mm (48.41 gm). Laureate, draped, and cuirassed bust right / Garlanded altar, before which kneels a bull about to be sacrificed; behind it, a column with a statue of Apollo Lykeios holding two wolves; gathered around the altar are a priestess(?), an attendant (probably the victimarius), another attendant holding a shield or large platter, and Perseus holding patera and harpa. SNG Levante 1087=SNG von Aulock 6027 (this coin). Fine, brown patina. An extraordinary medallic bronze, undoubtedly the largest and heaviest coin struck at Tarsos. ($1000)

Ex von Aulock Collection, 6027.

A marvelous, complex portrayal of the foundation sacrifice offered by Perseus at the city's birth. Tarsos was an important city even in pre-Greek times, sitting as it does at the foothills of the Taurus mountains, dominating one of the major passes over the mountains. But when the Greeks started to settle in the vicinity they had to create a mythology that ascribed the foundation of such a great city to a Greek hero. According to various sources this hero was Perseus, Triptolemus or Herakles, all of whom are featured on coins of Tarsos. Perseus here offers the libation preparatory to the sacrifice of the offering, the bull, all in good Graeco-Roman fashion. The bull may have been intended to represent the Taurus mountains, but according to scholars this would be a false etymology, Taurus deriving from the Aramaean tur, or mountain, not the Latin for bull. Apollo Lykeios is undoubtedly meant to stand in for Lykaonia, a district of Cilicia, and it is possible therefore that one of the other figures, perhaps the woman, is a personification of Isauria.