The Tyche on the reverse of this Antiochene tetradrachm was already an old woman when Augustus put his face on the obverse. Her pose, seated on a rocky outcrop with the river-god Orontes swimming out from beneath her feet, descends from the cult statue carved by Eutychides of Sicyon around 300 BC for Seleucus I, founder of the city. Three centuries on, in the year the legend marks as ETOUS HK NIKES, year 28 of the Era of Victory counted from Actium, and the year of Augustus's twelfth consulship (4/3 BC), the goddess of Antioch is still doing her old job of personifying the city, but she now sits below a laureate Roman head and her palm frond reads less as civic luck than as Actian victory exported.
The Era of Victory itself is the tell: Antioch, capital of the old Seleucid east and now the administrative anchor of Roman Syria, dates its coins from the day Octavian's ships broke Antony's line off Actium. A local goddess, a local river, a local mint, all keeping time by a Roman naval engagement fought a thousand miles away.
- Mint
- Antioch
- Struck
- 27 BC-AD 14, dated year 28 of the Actian Era and Cos. XII (4/3 BC)
- Authority
- Augustus
- Reverse
- shows Tyche seated right on rocky outcropping holding palm frond, with half-length figure of river-god Orontes swimming right below, monogram and consular date in right field