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Research Coins: Electronic Auction

 

Carcalla & the Pythian Games of Philippopolis

395, Lot: 277. Estimate $200.
Sold for $380. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

THRACE, Philippopolis. Caracalla. AD 198-217. Æ Medallion (34mm, 24.64 g, 7h). Struck circa AD 214. Laureate, draped, and cuirassed bust right / KOINON ΘPA AΛEZAN EN ΦI/ΛIΠΠOΠ/OΛI, table carrying prize urn containing five balls; below, palm frond and amphora. Moushmov, Philippopolis 377; Varbanov 1396 (R6). Good VF, dark green patina, smoothed, some tooling in Caracalla’s portrait. Rare.


Ex Goldberg 90 (2 February 2016), lot 3244.

The interesting series of medallions celebrating the Pythian Games in Philippopolis inform us that the commune of Thracians had organized the games in honor of the emperor, no doubt in AD 214 during his journey through Thrace on his way to campaign against the Parthians. To further flatter the emperor (that is, if he himself was not responsible for this change), the games were now titled “Alexandrian” after Alexander the Great, whom Caracalla was increasingly identifying himself with. The historian Herodian (8.1.1-2) provides us with a glimpse of the emperor’s obsession with Alexander at precisely this time:

Caracalla, after attending to matters in the garrison camps along the Danube river, went down into Thrace at the Macedonian border, and immediately he became Alexander the Great. To revive the memory of the Macedonian in every possible way, he ordered statues and paintings of his hero to be put on public display in all cities. He filled the Capitol, the rest of the temples, indeed, all Rome, with statues and paintings designed to suggest that he was a second Alexander. At times we saw ridiculous portraits, statues with one body which had on each side of a single head the faces of Alexander and the emperor. Caracalla himself went about in Macedonian dress, affecting especially the broad sun hat and short boots. He enrolled youths in a unit which he labeled his Macedonian phalanx; its officers bore the names of Alexander's generals.