CILICIA, SOLOI-POMPEIOPOLIS, Pompey the Great, 66-48 BC, bronze

DescriptionA bronze coin struck in Asia Minor for Pompey the Great during the Imperatorial Wars. The major military figure of his time besides Caesar, Pompey controlled most of Asia Minor. Defeated in battle against Caesar, Pompey fled to Egypt, where King Ptolemy XIII had him murdered. Soloi was on the southern Anatolian coast, not far from Tarsus. In the ancient Mediterranean world production of bronze coins was often considered to be a local affair.The Romans, as they were building their empire, preferred to let the local coinage arrangements remain in place. As they developed their political system into the Cult of Personality that was the Empire, they started putting imperial portraits on the local coins. Later, as the Empire began to shrink, they preferred to centralize their coinage operations, eliminating local control. There were also allied and client states, some of which, at times, issued coins celebrating the alliance or subservience.This category includes Greek and Roman coins and those of neighbors and successors, geographically from Morocco and Spain all the way to Afghanistan. Date ranges for these begin with the world’s earliest coins of the 8th century BC to, in an extreme case, the end of Byzantine Empire, 1453 AD.