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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 4357173, member: 19463&quot;]It is very hard to pick one favorite but I am quite fond of the large bronzes from Stratoniceia in Caria.&nbsp; Most famous are the ones with Caracalla facing a blank spot where his brother Geta was scraped from the coin in compliance with the order of Caracalla after he murdered Geta.&nbsp; The one I am showing here has Caracalla with his wife Plautilla who suffered the same fate (execution) but her picture did not get scraped from the coins.&nbsp; It is AE38 which qualifies as big in my book but only 19.85g due to being rather thin. The coin must have been issued rather soon after the wedding in 202 but certainly by 205 when she was banished immediately after the downfall of her father Plautianus whose high office under Septimius Severus had made her most qualified to be First Daughter-in-Law.&nbsp; Caracalla never had any love for the girl and quite possibly played a major role in arranging the removal of Plautianus for treason.&nbsp; I am sure that Caracalla would have preferred she were killed in 205 but was prevented by his father who none-the-less allowed the banishment.&nbsp; She was executed shortly after the death of Septimius and the murder of Geta in late 211.&nbsp; At this time, Caracalla was doing quite a bit of house cleaning by killing all the supporters of Geta so throwing in one ex-wife was not a big thing.&nbsp; [ATTACH=full]1101970[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Many coins of Stratoniceia bear at least one countermark usually on the obverse below the busts.&nbsp; There are many theories as to who is shown in the countermarks and I have seen more than one face suggesting to me that they are&nbsp; not all the same.&nbsp; This one has a particularly good strike of the countermark but I hesitate to guess who it is.&nbsp; If I had to assign a name judging by the face, I would guess it was Macrinus but that is nothing but a guess.&nbsp; The fine strike of the countermark (Howgego 84?) did an equally fine job making a flat spot on the reverse effectively decapitating the head of Zeus Panamaros who is shown riding a (similarly headless) horse before a flaming altar.&nbsp; These big coins are rare in great condition allowing the grade here to be &quot;not bad for these&quot;.&nbsp; The reverse actually has quite a bit of the legend which starts at the flattened top continuing clockwise naming the magistrate (Tiberius Claudius Dionysius?) and finishing with the city name that begins just under the horse&#039;s tail and goes up the left edge.&nbsp; Even a coin tis large had to use small letters!&nbsp; The obverse legend is very &#039;partial&#039; if we are trying to be nice and pretty much gone if honesty prevails. </p><p><br /></p><p>I think my favorite part of this coin is the way the great god Zeus has a strong torso but dangles skinny legs below a horse two sizes too small for the task of carrying a god.&nbsp; Ancient horses were not huge but the gods were. Of course I wish the countermark had been placed differently so the reverse had not been so flattened but this is pretty standard for these and I did get a very nice strike of the countermark in trade.&nbsp;&nbsp; The reverse ID is based on the fact that there was a local cult of Zeus very active in that region which involved a procession from Stratoniceia to Panamaros (slightly to the southeast).&nbsp; The book on this subject sells used for about what these coins cost and are in a language I do not read so I can not help explain anything else about the type.&nbsp; These coins rarely come in high enough grade that they get listed singly by major sellers but I was fortunate to have found this one in the stock of the late Don Zauche four years ago at a show in Baltimore.&nbsp; It is my fourth big bronze from Stratoniceia and my favorite today for the purposes of this thread.&nbsp; All four would make my top 10% favorite coins if I were forced to rank them so they tend to jockey for position in my favor on any given day.&nbsp; It is not right to be asked to favor one of your children over another but, today, this one leads by a skinny Zeus leg.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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