310AD Anonymous Ancient PAGAN Roman Coin GREAT PERSECUTION of CHRISTIANS i39933

Anonymous "Great  Persecution of Christians Issue" struck under:   Maximinus II, Daia -  Roman Emperor :  308-313 A.D. - Bronze Quarter-Nummus 15mm (1.61 grams) Antioch mint, circa 310-313 AD. Reference: Vagi  2954; Cohen 1 [Julian II], van Heesch 92 GENIO ANTIOCHINI, Tyche of Antioch enthroned facing, river god swimming at her  feet. APOLLONI SANCTO, Apollo  standing left holding patera & lyre, Є in field  to right , SMB in exergue.

PAGAN COINAGE OF THE GREAT  PERSECUTION Though formerly attributed to the period of Julian II, these pieces were struck  c. 305-313 as part of The Great Persecution of Christians in the east by  Diocletian, Galerius and Maximinus II Daia. Though the persecution of Christians  had occurred under many previous regimes since the 1st Century, it was pursued  assiduously by the Tetrarchs. Indeed, it was only halted (it would seem) when  they determined that it was working to the advantage of Constantine the Great,  who embraced the religion as a result. Associated with the persecution is a  series of 'autonomous' coins struck at the cities of Antioch, Nicomedia and  Alexandria. The bulk of these coins were probably struck c. 310-312 under  Galerius or Maximinus Daia (though the issues of Nicomedia can perhaps be  attributed to Galeria Valeria, the second wife of Galerius). The issues of  Alexandria occur in two denominations and celebrate Serapis and Nilus. With the  voluminous issues of Antioch we find a variety of mint marks, officinae and  control marks, which suggest the output was large and complex. Depicted on the  issues of Antioch are some of the city's most famous statues: the Tyche erected  by Eutychides (a pupil of Lysippus), the Apollo by Bryaxis of Athens, and  possibly the Zeus Nikephoros of the Temple of Apollo at Daphne which Antiochus  IV commissioned for his great festival of 167 B.C.  

You are bidding on the exact  item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime  Guarantee of Authenticity.

The Diocletianic or Great  Persecution was the last and most severe Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire . In 303, the Emperors Diocletian , Maximian , Galerius , and Constantius issued a series of edicts rescinding the legal rights of  Christians and demanding that they comply with traditional Roman religious practices . Later  edicts targeted the clergy and ordered all inhabitants to sacrifice to the Roman  gods (a policy known as universal sacrifice). The persecution varied in  intensity across the empire—weakest in Gaul and Britain , where only the first edict was  applied, and strongest in the Eastern provinces. Persecutory laws were nullified  by different emperors at different times, but Constantine and Licinius 's Edict of Milan (313) has traditionally marked  the end of the persecution.

The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer , by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1883)

Christians had always been subject to local discrimination in the empire, but  early emperors were either too reluctant to issue general laws against them or,  at least in the 3rd century (see  Crisis of the Third Centuryy ), too caught up  with more immediate issues to do so. It was not until the 250s, under the reigns  of Decius and Valerian , that such laws were passed. Under  this legislation, Christians were compelled to sacrifice to Roman gods or face  imprisonment and execution. When Gallienus acceded in 260, he issued the first  imperial edict regarding tolerance toward Christians, leading to nearly  40 years of peaceful coexistence . Diocletian's accession in  284 did not mark an immediate reversal of disregard to Christianity, but it did  herald a gradual shift in official attitudes toward religious minorities. In the  first fifteen years of his rule, Diocletian purged the army of Christians,  condemned Manicheans to death, and surrounded himself  with public opponents of Christianity. Diocletian's preference for autocratic  government, combined with his self-image as a restorer of past Roman glory,  presaged the most pervasive persecution in Roman history. In the winter of 302,  Galerius urged Diocletian to begin a general persecution of the Christians.  Diocletian was wary, and asked the oracle of Apollo for guidance. The oracle's  reply was read as an endorsement of Galerius's position, and a general  persecution was called on February 24, 303.

Persecutory policies varied in intensity across the empire. Where Galerius  and Diocletian were avid persecutors, Constantius was unenthusiastic. Later  persecutory edicts, including the calls for universal sacrifice, were not  applied in his domain. His son, Constantine, on taking the imperial office in  306, restored Christians to full legal equality and returned property that had  been confiscated during the persecution. In Italy in 306, the usurper Maxentius ousted Maximian's successor Severus , promising full religious toleration.  Galerius ended the persecution in the East in 311 , but  it was resumed in Egypt , Palestine , and Asia Minor by his successor, Maximinus . Constantine and Licinius, Severus's  successor, signed the Edict of Milan in 313, which offered a more  comprehensive acceptance of Christianity than Galerius's edict had provided.  Licinius ousted Maximinus in 313, bringing an end to persecution in the East.

The persecution failed to check the rise of the church. By 324, Constantine  was sole ruler of the empire, and Christianity had become his favored religion.  Although the persecution resulted in death, torture, imprisonment, or  dislocation for many Christians, the majority of the empire's Christians avoided  punishment. The persecution did, however, cause many churches to split between  those who had complied with imperial authority (the traditores ), and those who had remained  "pure". Certain schisms, like those of the Donatists in North Africa and the Meletians in Egypt, persisted long after the  persecutions. The Donatists would not be reconciled to the Church until after 411. In the centuries that  followed, some historians claim that Christians created a "cult of the martyrs",  and exaggerated the barbarity of the persecutory era. These accounts were  criticized during the Enlightenment and afterwards, most notably by Edward Gibbon . Modern historians, such as G. E. M. de Ste. Croix , have attempted to  determine whether Christian sources exaggerated the scope of the Diocletianic  persecution.

Tyche (Greek for luck; the Roman equivalent was Fortuna ) was the presiding tutelary deity that governed the fortune and  prosperity of a city, its destiny. Increasingly during the Hellenistic period,  cities had their own specific iconic version of Tyche, wearing a mural crown (a crown like the walls of the  city). The  Greek historian Polybius believed that when no cause can be  discovered to events such as floods, droughts, frosts or even in politics, then  the cause of these events may be fairly attributed to Tyche.

Stylianos Spyridakis  concisely expressed Tyche's appeal in a  Hellenistic world of arbitrary violence and unmeaning reverses: "In the  turbulent years of the Epigoni of Alexander , an awareness of the  instability of human affairs led people to believe that Tyche, the blind  mistress of Fortune, governed mankind with an inconstancy which explained the  vicissitudes of the time."

In literature, she might be given various genealogies, as a daughter of Hermes and Aphrodite , or considered as one of the Oceanids , daughters of Oceanus and Tethys , or of Zeus. She was connected with Nemesis and Agathos Daimon ("good spirit").

She was uniquely venerated at Itanos in Crete, as Tyche Protogeneia ,  linked with the Athenian Protogeneia ("firstborn"), daughter of Erechtheus , whose self-sacrifice saved the  city.

She had temples at Caesarea Maritima , Antioch , Alexandria and Constantinople . In Alexandria the Tychaeon , the temple of  Tyche, was described by Libanius as one of the most magnificent of the  entire Hellenistic world.

Tyche appears on many coins of the Hellenistic period in the three  centuries before the Christian era, especially from cities in the Aegean.  Unpredictable turns of fortune drive the complicated plotlines of Hellenistic romances , such as Leucippe and Clitophon or Daphnis and Chloe . She experienced a  resurgence in another era of uneasy change, the final days of publicly  sanctioned Paganism , between the late-fourth-century  emperors Julian and Theodosius I who definitively closed the  temples. The effectiveness of her capricious power even achieved respectability  in philosophical circles during that generation, though among poets it was a  commonplace to revile her for a fickle harlot.

In medieval art , she was depicted as carrying a cornucopia , an emblematic ship's rudder, and the wheel of fortune , or she may stand on the  wheel, presiding over the entire circle of fate.

The constellation of Virgo is sometimes identified as the heavenly  figure of Tyche, as well as other goddesses such as Demeter and Astraea .

In Greek and Roman mythology , Apollo , is one of the most  important and diverse of the Olympian deities . The ideal of the kouros (a beardless youth), Apollo has been  variously recognized as a god of light and the sun; truth and prophecy; archery ; medicine and healing; music, poetry,  and the arts; and more. Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto , and has a twin sister, the chaste huntress Artemis . Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu . Apollo was  worshiped in both ancient Greek and Roman religion , as well as in the modern Greco -Roman Neopaganism .

As the patron of Delphi (Pythian Apollo ), Apollo was an oracular god — the prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle . Medicine and healing were  associated with Apollo, whether through the god himself or mediated through his  son Asclepius , yet Apollo was also seen as a god  who could bring ill-health and deadly plague as well as one who had the ability to  cure. Amongst the god's custodial charges, Apollo became associated with  dominion over colonists , and as the patron defender of herds  and flocks. As the leader of the Muses (Apollon Musagetes ) and director of their choir, Apollo  functioned as the patron god of music and poetry . Hermes created the lyre for him, and the instrument became a common attribute of Apollo. Hymns sung to Apollo were  called paeans .

In Hellenistic times, especially during the third century BCE, as Apollo  Helios he became identified among Greeks with Helios , god of the sun , and his sister Artemis  similarly equated with Selene , goddess of the moon . In Latin texts, on the  other hand, Joseph Fontenrose declared himself unable to find any conflation of  Apollo with Sol among the Augustan poets of the first century, not even  in the conjurations of Aeneas and Latinus in Aeneid XII (161–215). Apollo and Helios/Sol  remained separate beings in literary and mythological texts until the third  century CE.

Gaius   Valerius Galerius Maximinus (20  November , c. 270 – July/August, 313) Roman emperor from 308 to 313,  was originally named Daia . He was born of peasant stock to the half  sister of the Roman emperor  Galerius   near their family lands around Felix Romuliana ; a rural area now in the Danubian region of Serbia , then  the newly reorganised Roman province of Dacia Aureliana subordinated to the later Prefecture of Illyricum ).

He rose to high distinction after he had joined the army, and in 305 he was  adopted by his maternal uncle, Galerius ,  and raised to the rank of caesar , with the government of Syria and Aegyptus .

In 308, after the elevation of Licinius to Augustus , Maximinus and Constantine were declared filii Augustorum ("sons of the Augusti"),  but Maximinus probably started styling himself after Augustus during a campaign  against the Sassanids in 310.

On the death of Galerius, in 311, Maximinus divided the Eastern Empire  between Licinius and himself. When Licinius and Constantine began to make common cause with one another, Maximinus entered  into a secret alliance with the usurper Caesar Maxentius ,  who controlled Italy. He came to an open rupture with Licinius in 313, he  summoned an army of 70,000 men, but still sustained a crushing defeat at the Battle of Tzirallum , in the neighbourhood of Heraclea Pontica , on the April 30 ,  and fled, first to Nicomedia   and afterwards to Tarsus , where he died the following August. His death was variously ascribed  "to despair, to poison, and to the divine justice".[  neededcitations ]

Maximinus has a bad name in Christian annals, as having renewed persecution after the publication of the  toleration edict of Galerius (see Edict of Toleration by Galerius ). Eusebius of Caesarea [1],  for example, writes that Maximinus conceived an "insane passion" for a Christian  girl of Alexandria , who was of noble birth noted for her wealth, education, and  virginity. When the girl refused his advances, he exiled her and seized all of  her wealth and assets.