Sale: CNG 69, Lot: 2235. Estimate $300.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 8 June 2005.  Sold For $400. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

[Antiquities] GRECO-ROMAN. Eastern terra sigillata bowl fragment. Circa 44 BC- 33 AD. Surviving diameter 100mm. The base of a very thick and heavy ceramic bowl of pinkish-cream wear with orange-red slip, on a ring foot, the center with molded medallion of an elderly man facing left. Glued together from two pieces, heavily encrusted. Rare form of terra sigillata ware. ($300)

The portrait on this bowl fragment has been identified as Theophanes of Lesbos by Caroline Williams in “Late Hellenistic ‘Portrait Bowls’ From Mytilene”, who notes thirty-one whole or partial examples from excavations and collections. Theophanes, a historian, philosopher, and politician, was a friend of Pompey, and it was his influence that won the city its freedom from Pompey in 62 BC. Theophanes and his wife Archedamis appear on a coin issue of Mytilene from the time of Augustus (RPC I 2342). Theophanes died in 44 BC, and his memory was perpetuated by a local cult that probably flourished until about 33 AD, when the descendents of Theophanes, still influential on the island, came to the attention of the typically suspicious Tiberius and were suppressed, along with the cult of their ancestor.