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Banner Artemide LVII
Exceptional Provincial Julius Caesar's Portrait
Lot # 437
Julius Caesar. AE 22 mm. Sinope mint, Bithynia and Pontus. Struck under the Reign of Nero (?). Obv. DIVO IVLIO. Bare head of Julius Caesar left. Rev. C I F. Plough left in wreath. RPC I 2142 var. (plough right, 2 examples cited); Rec 74 var. (same). AE. 5.54 g. 22.00 mm. RRRR. An unpublished and hitherto unknown variety of this issue of the greatest rarity (four items cited in RPC). A superb example, in excellent state of preservation, with an oustanding postumous provincial Julius Caesar's portrait. Lovely mottled deep olive green patina, with lighter spots. About EF. This undated coin with the obverse of DIVO IVLIO ( Rec 74 :  Recueil Général des Monnaies Grecques d'Asie Mineure) is rather mysterious. The use of CIF rather than CFI shows that it must be later than about 26 BC. The peculiar portraits was tentatively identified by Rec as representing Antony. In view of the terminus post, this is impossible. One might perhaps consider that the portrait, which is surely intended to be that of the deified Julius Caesar, has been contaminated with some of the features of Nero; in that case a sort of context for a portrait of Caesar is provided by the portraits of Augustus minted in Nero's reign , in the years 103 and 113; a closer parallel is provided by the coins for Divus Iulius minted at Apamea in the first and second centuries AD. (RPC I, p.356).