Sale: CNG 69, Lot: 1192. Estimate $500.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 8 June 2005.  Sold For $500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ASIA MINOR. Uncertain mint. Augustus. 27 BC-14 AD. Æ 28mm (21.90 gm, 12h). Bare head left / [Spear], sella quaestoria, and fiscus, Q below sella. RPC I 5409; AMNG II 29 (Pella) note; FITA 13-19 (Thessalonica[?]). Near VF, brown-black patina with traces of orange in recesses. ($500)

From the Garth R. Drewry Collection. Ex Stack's (3-5 May 1978), lot 602.

The similarity of this coin's reverse to that of Aesillas led to the earlier attribution of this issue to Macedonia. Unlike the more typical club of Hercules, the presence of a spear (hasta) suggested the issuer to be an as-yet-unknown quaestor propraetore, who, unlike Aesillas, would have held the power of imperium. Based on this assumption, Grant gave the issue to M. Acilius at Thessalonica, whom he tentatively identified as Caesar's governor of Macedonia in the final year of the Dictator's life.

The style of the portrait is identical to a coin of the possible Cilician Colonia Iulia Veteranorum (RPC I 4082). That coin bears the additional obverse legend PRINCEPS FELIX, a title which clearly identifies the portrait as Augustus. Contrary to the statements of Imhoof-Blumer or Grant, both of whom assigned the forementioned issue and our coin to the southwestern areas of the Black Sea, to date, no specimen of our coin has turned up in sites there, as one might expect, were thst region its point of origin. The patination, typical of Syria, may lend support for locating this coin there; the lack of further conclusive evidence makes a more certain attribution impossible.