Sparta's civic bronze coinage under Antoninus Pius belongs to a broader revival of Greek civic minting that the Antonine emperors tacitly encouraged as part of their philhellenic cultural politics. Sparta itself was by this period something of a living museum — Roman tourists came specifically to watch staged performances of archaic Spartan customs, including ritual flogging at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia. The city leaned hard into that identity, and its coinage reflected the same antiquarian self-fashioning.
The truncated ethnic ΛΑΚΕΔΑΙ[ in the reference suggests a die with the full ΛΑΚΕΔΑΙΜΟΝΙΩΝ that has been partially off-flan — a common casualty of the thick, irregular flans typical of Peloponnesian provincial bronze.
Sparta's civic bronze coinage under Antoninus Pius belongs to a broader revival of Greek civic minting that the Antonine emperors tacitly encouraged as part of their philhellenic cultural politics. Sparta itself was by this period something of a living museum — Roman tourists came specifically to watch staged performances of archaic Spartan customs, including ritual flogging at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia. The city leaned hard into that identity, and its coinage reflected the same antiquarian self-fashioning.
The truncated ethnic ΛΑΚΕΔΑΙ[ in the reference suggests a die with the full ΛΑΚΕΔΑΙΜΟΝΙΩΝ that has been partially off-flan — a common casualty of the thick, irregular flans typical of Peloponnesian provincial bronze.