118, Lot: 236. Estimate $200. Sold for $725. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ANONYMOUS. Time of Maximinus II. Circa 312 AD. Æ 17mm (1.93 g). Antioch mint. Draped, veiled and turreted bust of Tyche of Antioch right / Apollo standing left, holding patera and lyre. J. van Heesch, "The Last Civic Coinages and the Religious Policy of Maximinus Daza (312 AD)", in NumChron 1993, 5. VF, brown patina with some light encrustationa dn roughness. Very rare, only two specimens recorded by van Heesch.

J. van Heesch has provided the latest chronology for the anonymous civic bronzes of the fourth century. Under the auspices of Maximinus II, an active campaign of persecution against local Christians was particularly strong in Nicomedia, Antioch, and Alexandria, the three main mint centers in the eastern empire. Churches were closed, Christian property was seized, and professed Christians were expelled from many cities. To commemorate the pagan victory, these cities struck a series of small bronzes honoring the old Greco-Roman gods: Jupiter, Apollo, Tyche, and Serapis. The persecutions subsided the following year, possibly as a result of concerns expressed by Constantine and Licinius, the emperors in the west.