Watch List notes:

Pisidia, Termessos Major. AE 29; Pisidia, Termessos Major; Termessos Major, Pisidia, 2nd or 3rd Century AD, AE 29, 15.72g. SNG Leypold-2175 (same dies), SNG Paris-2188 (same obv. die). Obv: Laureate head of Zeus right; below, monogram. Rx: Tyche standing left, crowned by Nike standing behind her; between the two figures, monogram. As one of the best preserved and most attractive archaeological sites in Turkey, the Pisidian city of Termessos is well-known today to both tourists and scholars. Termessos is situated among the mountains of the rough hinterland of the Pisidian coast, not far from the modern city of Antalya. The ancient city name with the ending -essos points to a non-Greek or rather pre-Greek ethnicity. In their inscriptions the Termessians often referred to themselves as Solymians, a native people of Pisidia, and their language indeed appears to have been a Pisidian dialect. Although looking back on a venerable history (Termessos is mentioned in Homer's Iliad, and made its first appearance in real history in 334 BC when Alexander the Great's army passed through the region), Termessos only started issuing coins in the late 3rd century BC. Its first coins were tetradrachms of the Alexander type marked by the letters TE and by the symbol of the forepart of a horse that recurs on later bronze issues of Termessos. In the early 1st century BC Termessos started to coin autonomous bronzes showing on the obverse the head of Zeus Solymos (a local epiclesis of the Greek god, referring to Mount Solymos nearby) and various types on the reverse. The early Imperial coinage of Termessos is fairly simple – bronzes with the Termessian horse accompanied by some of the Olympic gods on the other side of the coin –but the later bronzes, of which we offer a sample here, show considerable variety. Maintaining the illusion of political autonomy, the obverse depicts a bust of the local hero Solymos or of Zeus or Hermes. Most of the reverse types also show single deities – Athena (lot 440), Zeus (lot 435), Nemesis (lot 441), Nike (lot 438), and so on – while the rarer types consist of scenes: Nike crowning Tyche (lots 434 and 436), Athena Nikephoros standing by a trophy (lot 439), and the emperor crowning a trophy (lot 437), the last apparently referring to a contemporaneous imperial victory. Another interesting and rare type reflecting a contemporaneous event is the gymnasiarch's vessel, referring to local games.Lovely imagery of Zeus, Nike and Tyche. Brown patina with lighter brown encrustation. VF