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Classical Numismatic Group, LLC
Auction 126  28-29 May 2024
Session 1 begins closing in
20 days 13 hr 50 min

Estimate: 500 USD
Current bid: 300 USD
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CARIA, Stratonicaea. Caracalla, with Plautilla. AD 198-217. Æ (34.5mm, 21.51 g, 12h). Tiberius Claudius Dionysios, president of the college of the grammateis. Struck AD 202-205. Laureate, draped, and cuirassed bust of Caracalla vis-à-vis draped bust of Plautilla; c/ms: helmeted head of Roma within circular incuse, and ΘEOY within rectangular incuse / Hecate standing facing, head left, wearing calathus, holding patera and torch; at feet left, dog standing left, looking right. BMC 65; SNG von Aulock 2694. For c/ms: Howgego 188; 536. Brown patina, light peripheral roughness, flan adjustment marks. VF.

Three Carian cities - Alinda, Alabanda, and Stratonicaea - commemorated the marriage between Caracalla and Plautilla by issuing coins with dual portraits proclaiming the young empress as "the new goddess Hera." As Ken Harl notes (Civic Coins and Civic Politics in the Roman East: A.D. 180-275 [Berkeley, CA: University of California Press], p. 41): "By implication, Caracalla was envisioned as a youthful Zeus, so that the imperial marriage became a symbolic reenactment of the celestial one."
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