341, Lot: 51. Estimate $100. Sold for $60. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SYRIA, Coele-Syria. Damascus. Otacilia Severa. Augusta, AD 244-249. Æ (29mm, 24.29 g, 12h). Draped bust right, wearing stephane / Turreted and draped bust of Tyche right within tetrastyle temple; to either to side, female figure holding temple containing eagle; in exergue, [ram leaping right, head left]. De Saulcy 4; Rosenberger 38; cf. BMC 26 = Price & Trell Fig. 452 (same rev. type for Philip I). Near Fine, brown patina, scratches and light roughness. Rare and interesting type.

From the J.S. Wagner Collection.

Wroth (BMC pp. lxxv and 287) referred to the structures that the female figures hold as cages containing fighting cocks, and Rosenberger followed in calling them cages, although stopping short of specifying an animal. A much more plausible solution is to interpret them as eagles within temples. Struck for both Philip I and Otacilia, the type shows the temples without fully depicting the roof, a detail that very much recalls similar temples with eagles found on certain issues of Rhesaena under Trajan Decius.