Ancients: LYDIA. Sardes. Antinoüs, favorite of Hadrian (died AD 130). AE medallion (29mm, 12.16 gm, 6h). NGC Good 4/5 - 2/5....

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Extremely Rare Medallion of Antinous

LYDIA. Sardes. Antinoüs, favorite of Hadrian (died AD 130). AE medallion (29mm, 12.16 gm, 6h). NGC Good 4/5 - 2/5. P. Cornelius Cornutus, Strategos, AD 131. ANTINOOC HPΩC-ЄΠIΦANHC, bare-headed, draped bust of Antinoüs right / PNOV (partial legend), uncertain type, likely Zeus Lydios standing facing, head left, eagle in outstretched right hand, long scepter in left. RPC -. Cf. Savoca Coins Silver Auction 118 (21 November 2021), lot 282 (same obverse die). Of the highest rarity, unpublished and with only one other example known.

Antinoüs was a handsome Bithynian youth whom Hadrian probably noticed on his visit to Bithynium-Claudiopolis in AD 123/4. According to Hadrian's recent biographer Anthony Birley, Antinoüs likely found a "discreet place" in Hadrian's entourage and accompanied the peripatetic emperor on his various journeys. Their relationship came to a mysterious end during Hadrian's visit to Egypt in AD 130. During a barge trip up the Nile, Antinoüs drowned, probably on 24 October. In his memoirs, Hadrian insisted the youth's death was an accident, but other historians implied either that Hadrian had killed him in some sacrificial rite, or that Antinoüs had committed ritual suicide to preserve Hadrian's health. Whatever the true story, Hadrian's grief was such that he deified the youth and founded the city of Antinoopolis near the spot of his drowning.

The cult of Antinoüs spread rapidly throughout the Greek East, making him the last of the truly popular pagan cult deities. His sculpted image also became ubiquitous as the very personification of male beauty, with over a hundred marbles of the Bithynian youth known to exist today. Antinoüs is extensively honored on the Roman provincial coinage of the East, particularly in Bithynia and Egypt, but is (not surprisingly) completely absent from Imperial Roman coinage. Even in second-century AD Rome, where Eastern luxuries and Greek influence abounded, certain senators and aristocrats still clung to opaque ideals of traditional, unadulterated Roman values and would have perceived the emperor's relationship with Antinoüs as excessively Greek.

One place the cult of Antinoüs evidently took root was the city of Sardes, the bustling Aegean port that served as the capital of the ancient region of Lydia. Antinoüs visited the city with Hadrian in AD 128, one of many stops on the three-year tour that began in Greece, where Hadrian celebrated the Eleusinian Mysteries in Athens, and ended with Antinoüs' mysterious death on the Nile two years later. Before the appearance of the Leu example in 2017, it was uncertain whether or not the pair had actually visited Sardes, though Hadrian's stay in the nearby metropolis of Ephesus is well-documented. But the emergence of both the Leu piece and this example with the name of the Lydian Strategos, Cornutus, confirms that the imperial entourage did in fact stop in Sardes, where they were evidently quite well-received. The importance of this piece - other than it being an unpublished large issue of Sardes for Antinoüs - lies in the remarkable obverse legend of ANTINOOC HPOC ЄΠIΦANHC: with the exception of the Leu example, this is a new and hitherto unattested epithet, which translates as 'the manifested hero Antinoüs' and is deeply connected to both Hadrian and the worship of Antinoüs.

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