Not wishing to corrupt neutrality by suggesting anything, could I get anyone to offer an opinion on the subject of this countermark? The host coin will be shown later but the question now is what is shown here. The mark was applied after ~200 AD.
Well, other than the C/M being an emperor (head is laureate), I don't know. Is the coin a civic issue Provincial? Maybe the C/M is of the emperor who reigned relatively soon after the coin was issued. If provincial, is it a province that was relatively independent but which underwent a status change? Maybe the C/M reflects the new status.
I would have guessed the same. Isn't there a possibility that some Roman banker had an old seal belonging to his grandfather, with an image of Antoninus Pius, and simply continued to use it? After all, Antoninus Pius was a popular Emperor and people probably continued to hold him in high esteem generations after his death.
Caracalla's beard would have been more trimmed, and his head shape was different. As for Septimius Severus, I would have expected his image to have his trademark pointy beard curls.
I don't think it's any of the suggestions, but, then I have no idea either. Caracalla, Sep Sev, A. Pius all seem wrong.
Thanks for the input. I do not know the correct answer. These are found on many coins of Stratoniceia in Caria. Some are said to be Caracalla or Geta. The previous owner of this one guessed Macrinus but I am not convince of any answer. This example is from one of my 15 new coins from the show in Annandale VA yesterday. These large AE38 coins are not rare but many are worse than this one. I saw one with full legends which was termed 'restored' by the seller. The rest of us would call it tooled. Mine is not tooled and has as much of the legend as most I have seen. The coin or medallion as you prefer was issued to honor the marriage of Caracalla and Plautilla. You will find many dies with either bust on either side and either this Zeus Panamaros on horse reverse or Hecate standing. The number of dies suggests a huge issue for so large a coin. I would like to know more about the issue. The countermark here is a great strike for this issue but came at the price of flattening the horse head and Zeus. On several occasions in past threads I have shown my two Septimius/Domna coins of the city (both with Hecate). One has the typical poor countermark while the other had the countermark dug out as if the subject was Damnatio Memoriae. It is a mystery to me.
Macrinus is a pretty good guess if you ask me. Stratonikeia in Caria issued no coinage for Macrinus that I can find, or Elagabalus for that matter, but the CM doesn't look like Elagabalus at all. They did issue coins for Severus Alexander. So perhaps during the interval where there doesn't appear to have been any minting, they re-tariffed some previous issues.
I tried but failed to win one of these with the Hekate standing reverse in the last CNG auction. The countermark is much less clear than yours and was just described "laureate and draped bust".
