Illustrated in Prieur

437, Lot: 314. Estimate $200. Sold for $340. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SELEUCIS and PIERIA, Antioch. Nero. AD 54-68. AR Tetradrachm (23.5mm, 14.92 g, 12h). Dated RY 6 and Year 108 of the Caesarean Era (AD 59/60). Laureate, beardless bust right, wearing aegis / Eagle standing left, wings spread, on thunderbolt; palm branch to left, ς above HP (dates) to right. Prieur 79 (this coin); McAlee 256a; RPC I 4180. Good VF, toned, struck slightly off center. Nice metal.

From the Michel Prieur Collection. Ex Superior Galleries (6 December 1991), lot 639.

Prieur notes in his book (p. 13): “This is the first coin where a palm-branch appears in the field. We have noted in our introduction to Antioch that it was a religious symbol linked to rites of aspersion. The suppression of the Tyche, which bore the palm in hand, does not make the palm disappear; it must have had a meaning in itself.”