Sale: CNG 67, Lot: 1091. Estimate $500.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 22 September 2004.  Sold For $400. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

CORINTHIA, Corinth. Augustus. 27 BC - 14 AD. Æ 21mm (6.72 gm). C. Servilius C.f. Primus and M. Antonius Hipparchus, duoviri. Struck circa 2-1 BC. Bare head of Augustus right / Bare heads of Gaius and Lucius Caesar facing one another; CL between. Amandry XIa (D10/R8.1 - this coin); RPC I 1136; BCD 338; SNG Copenhagen 203. Fine, dark green patina. Very rare. ($500)

Ex BCD Collection (sold privately).

The proud and 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 and established a civil government on the Roman model, headed by duoviri. 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. A number of 1st century AD 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.