Sale: Triton VII, Lot: 743. Estimate $750.  Closing Date: Monday, 12 January 2004.  Sold For $2800. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

CORINTHIA, Corinth. Hadrian. 117-138 AD. Æ 24mm (12.80 gm). HADRIANVS AVG C[AESAR IMP?], laureate, draped, and cuirassed bust right / COL IVL COR, the Acrocorinth - tetrastyle temple with statue of Aphrodite atop a vertiginous hill. Cf. BMC Corinth pg. 75, 596-597; SNG Copenhagen -; Imhoof-Blumer, Numismatic Commentary on Pausanias, pg. 26, 33. VF, dark brown patina. Very rare. ($2500)

Ex BCD Collection (Lanz 105, 26 November 2001), lot 597; Spink 68 (22 March 1989), lot 75.

The ancient city of Corinth was sacked by the consul Mummius in 146 BC, in the course of Rome's conquest of Greece. The site lay desolate for 100 years, until Julius Caesar refounded it as a Roman colony. From that point onward the city became a showpiece for Roman restoration of the glories of ancient Greece. Nero declared the (nominal) independence of Greece at Corinth in 67 AD, and took part in the Isthmian Games. The philhellene emperor Hadrian embellished many buildings, erected a grand civic bath, and built an aqueduct to bring water from Lake Stymphalos. Several of his coins show the structures on the summit of the Acrocorinth, the formidable natural fortress that dominated the Isthmus, the only land route into the Peloponnesus. This rare variety is the only type that shows the statue of Aphrodite within her temple, described by Pausanias (II:4-5).