Seleukid Numismatic Information

Antiochos VIII Philometor

The coins  •  List of known specimens  •  Die analysis  •  Weight analysis  •  References

The coins

On the total majority of royal coins issued during the sole reign of Antiochos VIII,¹ either the epithet Epiphanes (“the Manifest” or “the Illustrious”) is attached to his name or his name is stated without any epithet.² His coins therefore bear either the inscription ‘ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΑΝΤΙΟΧΟΥ ΕΠΙΦΑΝΟΥΣ’ or simply ‘ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΑΝΤΙΟΧΟΥ’.³ There is only one exception, a small issue of bronze coins minted at Antioch on the Orontes which bear the epithet Philometor (“the Mother-loving”):

This small issue is a part of an extensive series of bronze coins which was minted at Antioch mint from 121/0 BC (SE 192) to 111/10 BC (SE 202). Coins of this series have the same design as the coins with the epithet Philometor, but they bear the standard epithet Epiphanes and they are dated SE 192, ... , SE 200 and also SE 202. Coins of this series dated SE 201 are not known, probably because of the occupation of Antioch by Antiochos IX. Whereas coins of this series with the epithet Epiphanes are abundant, the coins bearing the epithet Philometor are rare and they are known from the year SE 202 only. Moreover, this epithet is not found elsewhere on Antiochos VIII’s coins.

Note that the epithet Philometor in itself is strange considering the role of Antiochos VIII in the death of his mother, Kleopatra Thea:⁵

Justin, Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, 39.2: Grypus (Antiochos VIII), having thus recovered his father’s throne, and being freed from foreign perils, found his life endangered by a plot of his own mother (Kleopatra Thea); who, after betraying, from desire of power, her husband Demetrius (Demetrios II), and putting to death her other son (Seleukos V, the oldest son of Demetrios II), was discontented at her dignity being eclipsed by the victory of Grypus, and presented him with a cup of poison as he was returning home from taking exercise. But Grypus, having received notice of her treacherous intention, desired her (as if to show as much respect for his mother as she showed for him) to drink herself first, and, when she refused, pressed her earnestly, and at last, producing his informant, charged her with the fact, telling her, “that the only way left to clear herself from guilt, was, that she should drink what she had offered to her son.” The queen, being thus disconcerted, and her wickedness turned upon herself, was killed with the poison which she had prepared for another.

Appian, Roman History, 11.69: After Seleucus (Seleukos V, the oldest son of Demetrios II), Grypus (Antiochos VIII) became king, and he compelled his mother (Kleopatra Thea) to drink poison that she had mixed for himself. So justice overtook her at last.

List of known specimens

The following table shows all specimens known to me.⁶ Please contact me at pvesely2002@yahoo.co.uk if you are aware of other coins of this type.

The abbreviations A and P stand for Anvil (obverse) and Punch (reverse) dies but the die identification is tentative because details are not clearly visible on some coins.

	Dies	Weight	Diameter	Symbols and date	Reference or location
1	A1/P1	6.61 g (originally stated as 102 gr)	c. 19 mm (originally stated as 0.75 in)	control mark in outer l. field, date ΒΣ in exergue7	Hunterian Coll. III, p. 103, No. 39 (Plate LXX, 2)
	© Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow
2	A1/P2	6.12 g (originally stated as 94.5 gr)	c. 19 mm (originally stated as 0.75 in)	control mark in outer l. field, date ΒΣ in exergue	Hunterian Coll. III, p. 103, No. 41
	© Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow
3	A2/P3	6.35 g (originally stated as 98 gr)	c. 19 mm (originally stated as 0.75 in)	control mark and date off flan	Hunterian Coll. III, p. 103, No. 40
	© Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow
4	A3/P4	6.30 g	19 mm	control mark in outer l. field, date ΒΣ in exergue	Tom Kirby’s collection
	Photo courtesy of Tom Kirby
5	A3/P5	5.74 g	20 mm	control mark in outer l. field, date Β[Σ] in exergue	Tom Kirby’s collection
	Photo courtesy of Tom Kirby
6	A4/P6	5.54 g	18 - 20 mm	control mark in outer l. field, unclear date in exergue	Petr Vesely’s collection, A08-AE-02
7	A4/P7	5.18 g	17.5 - 19 mm	control mark in outer l. field, date ΒΣ in exergue	Petr Vesely’s collection, A08-AE-01
8	A4/P7	4.64 g	16 - 18 mm	control mark in outer l. field, date ΒΣ in exergue	Tom Kirby’s collection
	Photo courtesy of Tom Kirby
9	A5/P8	6.41 g	17 - 18 mm	control mark in outer l. field, date ΒΣ in exergue	Petr Vesely’s collection, A08-AE-03
10	A5/P9	5.50 g	19 mm	control mark in outer l. field, date ΒΣ in exergue	Münzen & Medaillen GmbH, Auction 17 (October 4, 2005), Lot 1046
	Photo courtesy of Münzen & Medaillen GmbH
11	A6/P10	5.47 g	18 mm	control mark in outer l. field, date off flan	Tom Kirby’s collection
	Photo courtesy of Tom Kirby

Die analysis

Die frequencies are presented in Table 1. The 11 coins catalogued here were struck from 6 obverse and 10 reverse dies. Two obverse dies are represented by one coin (A2 and A6), 3 obverse dies are represented by two coins (A1, A3 and A5) and the remaining obverse die is represented by three coins (A4). One reverse die is represented by two coins (P7) and the remaining 9 reverse dies are represented by one coin.

Table 1: Die frequencies (numbers of dies represented exactly N times)

Note that all coins have bevelled edges. In six cases (coins Nos. 1-2 and 5-8) the smaller face of the bevelled edge blank was struck with the obverse type. In five cases (coins Nos. 3-4 and 9-11) the smaller face of the bevelled edge blank was struck with the reverse type. Obviously, the mint did not pay attention to which face of the single bevelled edge blank received which type.

For completeness, estimates of coverages of the corpus⁸ and of original numbers of dies are presented in Table 2.⁹ Nevertheless, it is necessary to emphasize that these estimates are statistically dubious and they should be taken extremely cautiously because the number of coins is very small and because the die identification is tentative (details are not clearly visible on some coins).¹⁰

Table 2: Estimates of the coverage and of the original number of dies

To receive more reliable results, it is necessary, on the one hand, to enlarge the corpus and, on the other hand, to accumulate a representative corpus of the common variant with the epithet Epiphanes and to put the examined variant with the epithet Philometor into context from the point of view of obverse die links and from the point of view of annual production of the common variant. Such widening of this study is being prepared.

Weight analysis

Table 3 shows statistical characteristics of weights of coins in the corpus.¹¹ Figure 2 shows histogram of weights of coins in the corpus with kernel density estimation¹² and fitted normal density curve superimposed (plotted against the right vertical axis). The normal probability plot shown in Figure 2 suggests approximate normality of data.¹³

Table 3: Statistical characteristics of weights of coins (in grams)

Figure 1: Histogram, kernel density estimation and fitted normal distribution

Figure 2: Normal probability plot

¹ For biographical data on Antiochos VIII, see the page devoted to his genealogy.

² No epithet is stated especially on silver tetradrachms and didrachms of the Phoenician eagle type. See, e.g., Newell, LSM, 22, 24, 26, 29-31, 33 - 34 (Ake-Ptolemais), SNG Spaer, 2587 - 2589, 2596 (Ake-Ptolemais), 2597 - 2645 (Askalon), and Houghton, CSE, 822 - 826 (Askalon).

³ The second inscription can be also found in abbreviated forms on some small bronze coins.

⁴ One of the 3 coins of this type recorded by MacDonald in Catalogue of Greek Coins in the Hunterian Collection (Vol. 3, p. 103, No. 39, Plate LXX, 2; presented as No. 1 in the list of known specimens on this webpage) is described as having a cornucopiae on left. However, it is not clear if the cornucopiae is really present on the reverse.

⁵ For biographical data on Kleopatra Thea, see the page devoted to her genealogy.

⁶ My sincere thanks to the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery (University of Glasgow), to Tom Kirby and to Münzen & Medaillen GmbH for their photos and for their kind permissions to publish them on this webpage.

⁷ MacDonald, Hunterian Coll. III, p. 103, mentions a cornucopiae in the left field. It is not clear if there is such a symbol on the reverse.

⁸ The coverage is the fraction of all produced coins of the given type that are from dies represented in the corpus. That is, the coverage is the fraction M/N where M is the number of all coins originally struck by the dies that are observed in the sample and N is the number of all produced coins of the studied type.

In other words, provided that the corpus can be considered a random sample from all produced coins of the studied type, the coverage of the corpus is the probability that a new coin of that type will be from a die already recorded in the corpus. It means that 1 minus the coverage is the probability that a new coin would yield a new die. Let us emphasize that the coverage is a property of the corpus, not of the coinage issue.

⁹ The coverages were estimated via Good’s coverage estimator, see Esty 1986, formula J2 (p. 208). For small random samples, this formula is slightly preferable to formula (1) presented in Esty 2006, p. 359 (see Esty 1986, formulas J1 and J2 and the following discussion). The confidence intervals were computed according to Esty 1986, formula J3 (p. 208), which is the same as formula (5) in Esty 2006, p. 360. Note that this formula works well for the sample size at least 30 or more (Esty 2006, p. 362) whereas our sample is much smaller.

The original numbers of dies were estimated according to Esty 1986, formula H5 (p. 205) where the equal-output estimate k' was computed by formula K1 (p. 209). The so-called shape parameter p was set to 2 (see Esty and Carter 1991-2). This is equivalent to Esty 2006, formula (2). Formula C2 in Esty 1986 (p. 201) was used for computation of the confidence intervals (formula (4) in Esty 2006 is a simplified version of the formula C2).

Note that Esty’s formula gives the left end of the 95 percent confidence interval for the number of obverse dies equal to 4 which is less than the number of obverse dies in the corpus (6 dies). For this reason, the left end of the confidence interval was set to the number of obverse dies in the corpus.

¹⁰ There is still another potential distortion. It is likely that there are obverse die links with Antiochos VIII’s coins bearing the regular epithet Epiphanes on the reverse (for coins of this type dated SE 202, see, e.g., SNG Spaer, 2543 - 2551). It means that numbers of coins with the epithet Philometor assigned to such dies are lower than the total production from these obverse dies. This kind of censored data may somewhat distort the estimates of the original number of obverse dies.

¹¹ The unbiased estimate of the standard deviation was used (i.e. the number of observations minus one was used as a divisor).

¹² Gaussian kernel was used with the bandwidths given by equation (3.31) of Silverman 1993, p. 48.

¹³ Lilliefors test also does not reject the assumption of normality of data (the p-value of 0.634 was estimated using the Monte Carlo sampling method with standard error less than 0.001).

References:

Appian: Roman History, Book XI - The Syrian Wars. Translated by Horace White. Macmillan and Co., New York, 1899. (The Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.org/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=App.+Syr.+1.1; Livius.org, http://www.livius.org/ap-ark/appian/appian_syriaca_00.html)

Esty, Warren W.: Estimating the size of a coinage: A survey and comparison of methods. Numismatic Chronicle 146 (1986), pp. 185-215.

Esty, Warren W.: How to estimate the original number of dies and the coverage of a sample. Numismatic Chronicle 166 (2006), pp. 359–364.

Esty, Warren W.; Carter, Giles F.: The distribution of the numbers of coins struck by dies. American Journal of Numismatics, Second Series 3-4 (1991-1992), pp. 165-186.

Houghton, Arthur: Coins of the Seleucid Empire from the Collection of Arthur Houghton. The American Numismatic Society, New York, 1983. (abbr. CSE)

Houghton, Arthur; Spaer, Arnold (with the assistance of Catharine Lorber): Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum. Israel I. The Arnold Spaer Collection of Seleucid Coins. Italo Vecchi Ltd., London, 1998. (abbr. SNG Spaer)

Justin (Marcus Junianus Justinus): Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus. Translated by Rev. John Selby Watson, M.A. George Bell and Sons, London, 1897. (See Forum Romanum website, http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/justin/english/index.html - 1853 Edition)

MacDonald, George: Catalogue of Greek Coins in the Hunterian Collection, University of Glasgow. Volume 3. Further Asia, Northern Africa, Western Europe. Elibron Classics, Adamant Media Corporation, 2003. Replica edition of the edition published by James Maclehose and Sons, Glasgow, 1905. (abbr. Hunterian Coll. III)

Newell, Edward T.: Late Seleucid Mints in Ake-Ptolemais and Damascus. The American Numismatic Society, Numismatic Notes and Monographs No. 84, New York, 1939. (abbr. LSM)

Silverman, B. W.: Density Estimation for Statistics and Data Analysis. Chapman and Hall, London, 1993 (repr. of 1st ed. publ. 1986).