Sale: CNG 72, Lot: 1142. Estimate $2000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 14 June 2006.  Sold For $1750. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

THRACE, Philippopolis. Caracalla. AD 198-217. Æ Medallion (41mm, 38.41 g, 7h). Struck AD 215. Laureate heroic bust left, seen from behind, wearing aegis / Two laureate athletes standing left, raising hands to touch wreaths; between, third athlete standing left, bending to apply oil from urn set on ground before him. Klose & Stumpf -; Mouchmov 5358; SNG Copenhagen -; Varbanov 1251 (same dies). VF, green patina, overall roughness. Important and rare games type.

The reverse of this medallion is one of many similar types struck by Philippopolis to commemorate the Pythian Games (ta Puqia), one of the four Greek Panhellenic Games that occurred in the second year of each four-year Olympic cycle. Held in honor of Apollo, the god of arts and “civilization”, these games featured competitions for music and poetry in addition to feats of athletic skill, and were meant to evoke the best of Greco-Roman culture. This particular games in AD 215, coming as it did in during Caracalla’s march east to fight the Persians, must have invested the event with further significance: by situating the occurrence of the games at such a crucial moment, the gods had signaled their approval for Caracalla’s enterprise against the “barbarians.”