Sale: Triton VII, Lot: 963. Estimate $4000.  Closing Date: Monday, 12 January 2004.  Sold For $6250. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

HADRIAN. 117-138 AD. AR Cistophoric Tetradrachm (10.25 gm). Nicomedia mint. Struck after 128 AD. IMP CAES TRA HADRIANO AVG P P, laureate head right / COM-BIT across field, octastyle temple, ROM S P AVG across frieze, pellet in pediment. RIC II 461b; cf. Metcalf, Cistophori B1; Pinder 100; BMCRE 1099 note; RSC 240b. Choice EF. [See color enlargement on plate 13] ($4000)

Ex Triton IV (5-6 December, 2000), lot 540; Freeman & Sear Fixed Price List 2 (1994), lot 109.

Cistophori were produced in the name of the Commune Bithyniae only once, under Hadrian. The inscription on the frieze, reconstructed as ROM(ae) S(enatui) P(opulo) AVG(usto) and translated as "To Rome, the Senate, the People, and Augustus" tentatively identifies the building as a temple of Rome and Augustus at Nicomedia. No archaeological remains of this structure have as yet been found, and reconstructions of it are based entirely on the second century numismatic evidence. Both Tacitus and Dio Cassius report that in 19 BC, Augustus did authorize the construction of a temple to Rome and himself at Pergamum, an event commemorated on his cistophori there; No such evidence for a temple at Nicomedia occurs earlier than thisr cistophorus. Moreover, the rise in the town's prominence as well as that of the chief priests, or Bithyniarchs, begins after the time of Hadrian. Clearly, however, the establishment of a temple to the Roman state gave a boost to the town's importance in the region.