Head, Barclay V.: Historia numorum: a manual of Greek numismatics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887)

ACHARACA (?)--ACRA8U8.

547

phori, but, as we shall presently see, the coinage of Lydia consists in the
main of bronze of the Imperial period.
This vast preponderance of the Imperial coinage over the autonomous,
both in Lydia and Phrygia, has induced me to depart from the somewhat
antiquated geographical order hitherto universally adhered to by numis-
matists. Lydia and Phrygia seem to follow naturally next after Ionia
and Caria. To interpolate Lycia, Pamphylia, Pisidia, Cilicia, and Cyprus,
between Caria and Lydia, appears to me to be introducing, quite unne-
cessarily, an element of confusion into the homogeneous coinage of the
Roman Province of Asia, which should certainly be as far as possible
kept together.
As M. Waddington justly remarks (Fastes cles Provinces asiatiques, p. 24),
it is by means of its coinage that we are enabled to identify the exact
boundaries of the province of Asia, for the Imperial coins struck in that
province are distinguished from those of all the other provinces of Asia
Minor by two well-marked peculiarities: (1) by the frequent occurrence
on them of local magistrates’ names usually accompanied by their titles,
such as Strategos, Archon, Archiereus, etc.; and (2) by the common
substitution for the Emperor’s head of a symbolic bust accompanied by
the legend ICPA CYNKAHTOC1, by which is meant the Roman Senate,
whereby the cities of the Province of Asia indicated their dependence
upon the Senate, Asia having been always a Senatorial Province. M.
Waddington was, I believe, the first to draw attention to the fact that
this custom was peculiar to the Province of Asia, for in the neighbouring
Bithynia, which was for a time also Senatorial, no trace of it exists.
This peculiarity also applies to the names of local titled magistrates, for,
although in Bithynia, Galatia, and Cappadocia we often meet with the
names of Proconsuls or of Imperial Legati, yet we never find those of
local municipal dignitaries, while in Lycia, Pamphylia, Pisidia, and
Cilicia not even these occur, for the Imperial coins of those districts
never bear magistrates’ names.
These'considerations, added to a well-marked similarity of fabric, form
in my judgment a good and sufficient reason for the modification of the
commonly-accepted order of arrangement which I have thought fit to
adopt in the present work.
Acharaca (?) (Strab., 579, 649, and 650), between Tralles and Nysa. To
this place Millingen (who calls it Characa, 8yll., p. 79) would attribute
a coin of Drusus reading KAPAKI . . . . Type—Caduceus. But the
attribution is by no means satisfactory, for Acharaca was not a distinct
7roXis, but merely a village in the territory of Nysa.
Acrasus (Waddington, As. Min., 60), on the upper course of the Caicus.
Imperial, with or without heads of Emperors—Trajan to Gordian.
Inscr., AKPACIHTClN. Magistrates’names with title Strategos. Types—
KAIKOC, River Caicus recumbent; The death of Dirke ; Apollo and
Marsyas, the former resting on column, the latter as a satyr standing

1 The legends 1CPA CYNKAHTOC, 0CON CYNKAHTON, and the like, are so
frequent on the coins of the towns of the Roman Province of Asia, especially in Lydia and
Phrygia, that I have not always been careful to chronicle their occurrence.
N n 2