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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DonnaML, post: 4614569, member: 110350&quot;]When people describe ancient coins depicting &quot;panthers,&quot; I suspect that they don&#039;t think very much about the fact that the panther is not a separate species, and that all or most of such animals were probably simply leopards.&nbsp; Even so-called &quot;black panthers&quot; are simply melanistic leopards or jaguars. (Obviously, jaguars weren&#039;t known to the ancient Greeks and Romans!)&nbsp; For whatever reason, though -- and maybe I&#039;m just not looking in the right places -- almost all &quot;panthers&quot; that I&#039;ve seen on ancient coins are depicted <u>without</u> spots or any other body markings.&nbsp; (I&#039;m not counting the striped big cats on some of Gallienus&#039;s zoo coins with legends naming &quot;Liber Pater&quot; [associated with Dionysos/Bacchus], traditionally identified as panthers, that are actually tigresses.&nbsp; See the article at <a href="https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Liber%20Pater" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Liber%20Pater" rel="nofollow">https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Liber Pater</a> .)</p><p><br /></p><p>One possibility is that most panthers on ancient coins were intended to be black panthers, i.e., melanistic leopards (edited to clarify: with spots you can&#039;t see except up close).&nbsp; But at least for Dionysos/Bacchus, who was traditionally associated with the &quot;panther,&quot; there are plenty of ancient mosaics and frescoes that do show these animals with spots, making it clear that the intended big cat was, in fact, an ordinary leopard. (For example, see the mosaics at <a href="https://www.theoi.com/Gallery/Z12.1.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.theoi.com/Gallery/Z12.1.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.theoi.com/Gallery/Z12.1.html</a> and <a href="https://www.theoi.com/Gallery/Z12.2.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.theoi.com/Gallery/Z12.2.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.theoi.com/Gallery/Z12.2.html</a>.)</p><p><br /></p><p>In any event, I recently received a coin that does show Dionysos&#039;s panther as a spotted cat -- clearly, I believe, meant to be a leopard.&nbsp; It&#039;s from the city of Philadelphia in Lydia (now Alaşehir, Turkey), which became a possession of the Roman Republic after 133 BCE, when the last Attalid king of Pergamum, Attalus III, died and bequeathed his kingdom to Rome.&nbsp; (Although I haven&#039;t seen any source that precisely dates the coin, it seems to have been issued after that bequest. Therefore, in my opinion, it should really be considered a Roman Provincial coin -- even though the catalogues all classify coins issued by Republican provinces simply as &quot;Greek&quot; coins, without distinguishing them in any way -- like the cistophoric tetradrachm from Tralles/Tralleis in Lydia that I wrote about last month.&nbsp; See <a href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/a-cistophoric-tetradrachm-from-a-roman-republican-province.361983/" class="internalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/a-cistophoric-tetradrachm-from-a-roman-republican-province.361983/">https://www.cointalk.com/threads/a-cistophoric-tetradrachm-from-a-roman-republican-province.361983/</a>, .)&nbsp; Here&#039;s the description:</p><p><br /></p><p>Lydia, Philadelphia, AE 17, Late 2nd/Early 1st Centuries BCE, Hermippos, son of Hermogenes,* archiereus [magistrate]. Obv. Head of young Dionysos right, wearing ivy-wreath and band across forehead, [Φ]ΙΛΑΔΕΛΦΕ[ΩΝ] vertically behind / Rev. Spotted pantheress [leopard] walking left, with head turned back to right, cradling thyrsos bound with fillet (ribbon) against left shoulder, right foreleg raised; ΑΡΧΙΕΡ-ΕΥΣ above, ΕΡΜΙΠΠΟΣ in exergue. Seaby II 4720 [Sear, D., <i>Greek Coins and their Values, Vol. II, Asia &amp; Africa</i> (Seaby 1979), at p. 430 (ill.)]; BMC 22 Lydia 16 [Head, B.V. <i>A Catalogue of Greek Coins in the British Museum, Lydia</i> (London 1901) at p. 189]; SNG Von Aulock II 3057 [<i>Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum, Deutschland, Sammlung Hans Von Aulock, Vol. 2: Caria, Lydia, Phrygia, Lycia, Pamphylia</i>&nbsp; (Berlin 1962)]; SNG Copenhagen 340 [<i>Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum, Copenhagen, The Royal Collection of Coins and Medals, Danish National Museum, Part 27, Lydia Part 1</i> (Copenhagen 1947)]; Imhoof-Blumer 8 [Imhoof-Blumer, Friedrich, <i>Lydische Stadtmünzen, neue Untersuchungen</i> (Leipzig 1897) at pp. 114-115]; Mionnet IV No. 536 [Mionnet, Théodore E., <i>Description de Médailles antiques grecques et romaines, Vol. IV, Lydie</i> (Paris 1809) at p. 98]. 17 mm., 5.02 g.&nbsp; [With old collector’s envelope.]</p><p><br /></p><p>* Father’s name known from other coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1142883[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>(Seller&#039;s photo.) This is very close to the actual color of the coin, which I like very much. (The seller described it as &quot;Dark brassy tone with good metal and detail,&quot; but didn&#039;t purport to give it a grade.&nbsp; As I&#039;ve said more than once before, I couldn&#039;t care less about the &quot;grade&quot; of an ancient coin; the important thing is that it appeals to me!)</p><p><br /></p><p>There&#039;s something about the coin that actually reminds me of a Roman Republican coin, except for the fact that it&#039;s bronze rather than silver. Perhaps it&#039;s the vertical legend behind Dionysos&#039;s head on the obverse; perhaps it&#039;s the depiction of the leopard on the reverse.</p><p><br /></p><p>This is the &quot;old collector&#039;s envelope&quot; that came with the coin.&nbsp; It looks like the ink description may have been written with a fountain pen rather than a ballpoint, and it&#039;s faded enough that my wild guess would place it sometime in the 1950s or earlier.&nbsp; I could be completely wrong, of course!</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1142884[/ATTACH]</p><p>And here are three of the older catalogue entries I found for the coin, from 1901, 1897, and 1809(!), respectively. (See my description above.) The last one is definitely the oldest catalogue entry I&#039;ve found for any of my ancient coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>BMC 22 Lydia 16 (1901)</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1142885[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Imhoof-Blumer No. 8, pp. 114-115 (1897)</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1142888[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Mionnet Vol. IV, No. 536 p. 98 (1809)</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1142897[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>For a coin that&#039;s been known for at least 200 years, it doesn&#039;t seem to be put up for auction or sale all that often -- perhaps a half-dozen times a year?&nbsp; All the photos I found were black and white, so I wasn&#039;t really able to compare my example to others very well.&nbsp; Not that that matters; I was just curious. Does anyone else here have one?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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