Hadrian AR Tetradrachm of Antioch, Seleucis and Pieria. AD 117. AYT KAI ΘЄ TPA ΠAP YI ΘЄ NЄP YI TPAI AΔPIANOC CЄB, laureate and cuirassed bust to right / ΔΗΜΑΡΧ ЄΞΟΥϹΙΑϹ, eagle standing facing on club, head and tail to left, with wings displayed. RPC III 3685; McAlee 530; Prieur 1526 (Tyre). 15.94g, 27mm, 6h.

Good Very Fine. Very Rare, only five cited in RPC.

From a private English collection.

When Trajan died of edema in early August AD 117 at Selinus in Cilicia (which was later re-named Trajanopolis in his honour), P. Aelius Hadrianus was governor of Syria, with its capital at Antioch. He was the Italo-Hispanic emperor’s first cousin’s son, husband of his grand-niece Vibia Sabina, and the favourite of his erudite wife Plotina, who confirmed Hadrian’s adoption and succession. The Senate duly endorsed the acclamation of the troops necessitating his immediate return to Rome. Trajan’s deified body was brought to Antioch for cremation and the ashes sent to Rome, where they were placed in an urn in the base of his eponymous column. Thus Antioch was the centre of the early events of Hadrian’s reign, not least of which was the appointment of a new governor of Syria, and the production of coins.

The current coin belongs to the second series of the first issue, which continued the reverse type of the previous reign with the eagle standing on a club. This was understandably placed under the rubric Tyre by Prieur, because of the club symbol employed by that mint from the reign of Septimius Severus to Diadumenian. However, the mint identification was corrected by McAlee in 2007 and followed by RPC III by matching the obverse bust style to the clearly Antiochene tetradrachms with the usual animal thigh symbol below the eagle.