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  • Apollo on Roman Coinage – The Changing Image of a God
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Chatter

Minutes of the 1292nd Meeting

The 1292nd meeting of the Chicago Coin Club was called to order by President Melissa Gumm at 6:45pm CDT Wednesday, September 9, 2026. This was an in-person and online meeting with 18 members and one guest present at the CBA and 17 members online, for a total of 36.

Club Meeting Minutes

The August club meeting minutes were approved as published in the Chatter, both in print and on the CCC website.

New Memberships

Secretary Scott McGowan reported no new membership applications.

Treasurer’s Report

Treasurer Lyle Daly presented the August period report indicating revenue of $220.00 (Dues, ANA Banquet) and expenses of $752.85 (Microphone, CBA room rent, ANA Banquet) for a period total of -‍$532.85. Lyle also indicated a corrected July report was sent to the board indicating a small adjustment.

Old Business

1. Committee Reports:
   1. Special Projects Committee: No updates this month.
   2. Hall of Fame Committee: No recommendations, tabled for 2026.
   3. Legacy Project: No Report.
2. Deven reported more item lots are coming in for the auction.
3. Lyle Daly presented options with cost for the December banquet. Coopers Hawk and Maggiano’s were removed due to being too expensive. The Capri from previous years is not available this year. The remaining options are The Great Escape in Schiller Park $45, Des Plaines Elks Club in Des Plaines (2025 banquet location) $55, Alpine House in Westchester $50, 19th Century Club in Oak Park $67. Lyle explained menus, parking, accessibility, and photos for each option. A vote of the members present was taken and an email survey will be sent to the club membership to vote on member preference for the location.
4. Melissa Gumm gave a brief update on some of the CCC Board meeting topics which included placement of donated numismatic material for “little libraries,” a review of the Club’s by-laws will be completed for needed updates, a nomination committee will be assembled for a new slate of CCC officers to be elected at the December meeting.
5. Deven Kane reported that many spots are open for featured speakers at 2027 meetings. Contact him if you wish to give a presentation.

New Business

1. Mark Wieclaw reported the first meeting for the club’s 1300th meeting planning will be September 24th.
2. Melissa Gumm reported the Estate of Barbara Ciechna, wife of Dennis Ciechna (CCC member 1079 from March 1999, who passed in November, 2024) and who was predeceased by Dennis, has left provisions in her estate for the Chicago Coin Club. Barbara established The Ciechna Family Revocable Living Trust which lists CCC as a Trust beneficiary.
3. Melissa also reported that she and secretary Scott McGowan visited CCC member Carl Wolf at his rehabilitation center following his stroke. He is doing well and thanks the club members for all the greetings, well wishes, cards, and positive thoughts. A card was circulated for all members present to sign for Carl.

Featured Program

Josh Benevento presented on Apollo on Roman Coinage – The Changing Image of a God. Following the presentation Deven Kane announced a speaker’s medal and ANA education certificate would be presented to Josh at a future date.

Show and Tell

Vice President Ray Dagenais announced the evening’s five Show and Tell presentations. A reminder to the club that in the summarizing of points for the show and tell, presenters receive extra points per presentation after giving five presentations.

President Melissa Gumm reviewed upcoming numismatic events, then adjourned the meeting at 8:37PM.

Respectfully submitted,
Scott McGowan, Secretary

Speaker’s Wor[l]d
Apollo on Roman Coinage – The Changing Image of a God

presented by Josh Benevento
to our September 9, 2026 meeting

The families (or hierarchies) of gods observed in the Greek and Roman worlds were very similar – most figures and their attributes were very similar, with the notable difference being their names: Zeus at the top of the Greek hierarchy, and Jupiter atop the Roman hierarchy. The exception to this was the god associated with Prophecy, Music, Healing, Purification, Archery, and Light: in both hierarchies he was named Apollo.

On representations of Apollo, his attributes were indicated by the inclusion of certain symbols: laurel, tripod, omphalos, kithara, and bow. A laurel wreath symbolized Apollo’s divine status, prophecy, and victory. A tripod was associated with the oracle at Delphi and Apollo’s prophetic power. An omphalos marked the center of the world at Delphi and represented Apollo’s connection to prophecy and the divine. A kithara (a large, substantial version of the lyre) represented Apollo’s role as a god of music, harmony, and culture. A bow symbolized Apollo’s power as an archer, his ability to protect, and his association with light and the sun.

Apollo appeared on coins for centuries, but did not always mean the same thing. Before Rome, he appeared as a Greek god across the Mediterranean. Josh showed four coins from a range of periods, in a range of appearances. A Brutium coin from the archaic period has a walking Apollo with a stag in the background, a Macedonian coin from the classical period shows a mostly facing bust of Apollo, a Seleucid coin from Antioch during the Hellenistic period shows Apollo seated upon an omphales while holding a bow, and a Roman Republican coin features a bust of Apollo with a laurel wreath, bow, and quiver.

His first temple in Rome, the temple of Apollo Medicus, vowed in 433 BC, has ties to healing and protection. Two centuries later, during the second Punic wars, the Ludi Apollinares religious games were first held, inspired be prophecy and the Sibylline tradition; they became an annual event a few years later. By the time Apollo appeared on Roman silver coins of the Republic, his image was already familiar to Roman audiences from appearing in Roman art. Josh showed a range of Roman silver denarii featuring Apollo on one side – some showed Egyptian design influence, the Muse series of Pomponius Musa showed a different Muse on the side opposite Apollo, and others showed a heroic bust, a bust with a laurel wreath, a bust with a laurel wreath and star, and even Apollo holding a bow while driving a quadriga.

To the Roman public, Apollo did not have a single meaning. His image could invoke religion, prophecy, healing, music, ancestry, or the identity of the moneyer. Emperor Augustus changed that. In 36 BC, following a lightning strike on his property on the Palatine hill, Octavian announced the Temple of Apollo Palatinus; this shows Apollo’s Palatine relationship with Octavian began before the famous victory over the forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 BC. The account by Virgil places Apollo above Actium – Apollo of Actium sees from above and bends his bow: at this all Egypt, and India, all the Arabs and Sabaeans turn and flee.

The Temple of Apollo Palatinus, dedicated 28 BC, was the second temple to Apollo in Rome; it was built close to Augustus’ residence. This temple featured a highly celebrated cult statue of Apollo; the temple and statue were destroyed by a fire in the fourth century, with minimal buried ruins now offering barely a hint at its original grandeur. Although the statue is lost, some images from classical art give hints as to its appearance and are used to propose reconstructions. Most believe it depicted a standing Apollo, holding a kithara. Josh showed four examples of Augustan coins with Apollo on the reverse, one shown seated and the others standing, holding various items (but a kithara was most common), over an abbreviation for Actium.

Augustus’ Apollo represents victory, order, culture, religious renewal, and the introduction of a new age. With Augustus’ death in AD 14, Apollo disappeared from the silver coinage. For more than a century, until the reign of Antoninus Pius, Apollo did not appear on a regular silver coin – only appearing once during Trajan’s reign as part of a series of rare coins reviving iconic coin designs from the Roman republic and early empire. Apollo did not disappear from Rome during that time – he was worshipped, written about, appeared in art, present on provincial coinage, and occasionally present on other Roman denominations. Josh could not offer a simple reason for why that happened; he has found no mention in the literature about this disappearance.

Josh illustrated Apollo’s return to Roman silver coins with a coin of Antoninus Pius using a familiar image on the reverse – a standing Apollo holds a wreath in one hand and a kithara in the other – but Apollo is surrounded by a new legend, identifying it as the Apollo of Augustus. Apollo continued to appear on the Imperial issues of Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, the Severans, and into the third century. But his image and meaning slowly changed. Apollo was a healer, protector, musician, prophetic god, and increasingly solar-associated.

As the empire faced military crises in the later third century, some of Apollo’s imagery and protective role had begun to shift toward Sol, introducing the legend SOLI INVICTO (To the Unconquered Sun). A shown coin of Gallienus features a standing Apollo holding a wreath and a kithara, now also with a star in the field, surrounded by the legend APOLLINI CONSERVA casting Apollo as protector of the emperor. A shown coin of Aurelian features a standing figure surrounded by the legend SOLI INVICTO casting Sol as the unconquered protector.

Apollo remained one of the ancient world’s most recognizable gods for centuries. What changed was not Apollo himself, but what Romans chose to communicate through his image.

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Show and Tell

Items shown at our September 9, 2026 meeting,
reported by Ray Dagenais.

1. Noah Graf showed a bronze follis of Byzantine Emperor Leo VI (886-912 AD) from the Constantinople mint, 25mm in diameter. The obverse shows a crowned facing bust of the Emperor, wearing a chlamys, and holding an akakia with the legend +LEON BAS-ILEVS ROM. This simple legend is repeated on the reverse which has no design, only four lines of text. It is notable that, even at this late date, when the Empire was thoroughly Greek in culture and language, the coinage still reflects the state’s Roman roots in the use of the Latin alphabet, excepting only the Greek theta for the “th” sound that is foreign to Latin and its modern descendants. This follis is considered by Sear as possibly the coin with the single highest mintage in the whole numismatic history of the Empire. The akakia he holds is a roll of purple silk filled with dust, a symbol of the mortal man clothed in the sovereign power of the imperial state. His moniker of “The Wise” arose from his legacy as a law-giver – he commissioned an official Greek translation and updated re-codification of the Code of Justinian plus the new laws enacted over the subsequent 300 years. This remained the primary law code of the Empire down until its end in the 15th century. It was even briefly revived as the law code of the nascent Greek state in 1821, almost 1000 years after Leo’s original enactment.
2. Robert Leonard showed three coins, from different eras, each struck from more than two dies using entirely different methods.
   1. A Judaean coin of Alexander Jannaeus, 103-76 BC – the obverse has an anchor and blundered Greek inscription, while the reverse should show a star of 8 rays in a circle (or sun-wheel), but this coin has portions of three reverses from the anvil die. Apparently, multiple reverse dies were cut in the anvil in an effort to speed production of these low value coins.
   2. Made in Moldova (Moldavia), an official counterfeit of a Riga schilling of Charles XI, 1660-1697, with a blundered inscription. Eustratie Dabija (his appellation means “the drunk”), voivode of Moldova 1661-1665, authorized the counterfeiting of Livonian (Riga) schillings (solidi) because his own coins were of poor quality. Like the originals, they are struck from roller dies. On this coin, the rollers have slipped such that each side shows parts of two dies, with the reverse 50% off center.
   3. A Lincoln Memorial cent saddle strike, probably from 1997-1999. Saddle strikes are a phenomenon that occurs only with a dual or quad press (two or four die pairs), when a planchet is struck simultaneously by two adjacent die pairs. The unstruck interval between the two tandem off-center strikes buckles upward, forming a “saddle.” In this case, as often happens, one of the four dies is obscured by a blank planchet, which probably caused the misfeed. Bob purchased this coin at Stack’s, New York, Nov. 18, 1999.
   At the ANA convention, Bob got to talking to error coin specialist Greg Bennick, who wanted to see an image of his saddle strike. Bob thought of the other two coins and decided to image them all for Greg, and brought them for Show and Tell since he had them out.
3. Ray Dagenais asked for opinions and help with an interesting coin he had recently acquired: a common 1924 Peace dollar in about uncirculated condition that had been cleaned. An unremarkable example, but in examining the piece he noticed 10 or so horizontal lines covering the 9 in the date. Under a light tilted along the surface of the coin, the lines appear to have a raised edge suggesting that they might have been transferred from a scratched die. Another guess was the possibility that the lines were deep scratches on the coin itself, with the raised portion along the scratches being metal that had been pushed up out of the scratches. A vertical bar along the front curl of the nine and a shorter horizontal bar along the top of the nine are also intriguing. Ray’s guesses included the possibility that these marks are remnants of a stray punched letter such as an ‘L’ or ‘D,’ or clash marks from the reverse die. Ray passed the coin around and asked for our comments.
4. Deven Kane showed four items.
   1. A silver tetradrachm from the Macedonian Kingdom, of Alexander III the Great (336-323 BC), with countermarks and scratches. It is a late lifetime or early posthumous issue, minted at Amphipolis circa 323-320 BC. The obverse features a head of Heracles wearing a lion skin headdress, while the reverse features a seated Zeus on a backless throne, with an eagle in outstretched right hand and a grounded scepter in left. The so-called posthumous issues should be attributed to his son Alexander IV.
   2. A bronze coin (28mm in diameter, weighing 13.15 grams), from Tyre in Phoenicia, of Aquilia Severa (AD 220-222). Her diademed, draped bust, with hair brushed in waves and bound in small chignon at base of neck, is featured on the obverse, while the main reverse features are a temple of six columns, with arcuated lintel in center, with a standing Astarte-Tyche within. One of the more scandalous choices of the young emperor Elagabalus was to marry Aquilia Severa, a Vestal Virgin. Traditionally, the punishment for breaking the thirty-year vow of celibacy was to be buried alive. He divorced her, but he remarried her after the divorce of his third wife, Annia Faustina. Her fate after his death in AD 222 is not known.
   3. A silver marriage intaglio reading CAECVS ET VRBICAV, with bare-headed, draped, male and female busts facing each other. This Roman Imperial antiquity, from the early 4th century, is 14mm in diamter and weighs 2.14 grams – it is uniface. Appius Claudius Caecus was an accomplished statesman during the Roman Republic circa 312-279 BC, and is best known for two major building projects: the Appian Way and the Aqua Appia. Could this intaglio be from a late descendant? Although the reading of the legend is uncertain, the hair style of the female bust was popular during the reign of Carinus, emperor and husband of Magnia Urbica who appears on coins sporting a similar style.
   4. A “Visit of the Allied Sovereigns to England” bronze 1814 medal, 41mm in diameter, by Barre & Mudie. On one side, the head of Britannia wears a Corinthian-style helmet with a British lion on the side, while the other side features Neptune standing on the shore before the Temple of Janus – the temple’s closed doors allude to the current peace. The peace would be short-lived, ending with Napoleon’ short return to power.
5. Mark Wieclaw showed a range of items.
   1. A recap of the recent ANA convention in Pittsburgh through photos of CCC members taken throughout the convention (joint CCC/NYNC dinner, ANA banquet, Exhibit awards, Bourse floor, etc.), and a few of the Convention Center itself.
   2. Photos of some of the displays at the show.
      1. The U.S. Mint display of all eleven of the 1933 $20 gold Double Eagles.
      2. Several items of the Tyrant Collection of Byzantine Gold. Beautiful pieces in exceptional condition.
      3. Two of the magnificent coins from an important collection of Athenian silver coins.
   3. Mark purchased the maximum of five of the new Trump dollar that went on sale on Tuesday, August 25, 2026, and took them to the TEC (The Elongated Collectors) Booth and had them rolled with both show’s(ANA and TEC) dies. He showed examples which had been rolled both horizontally and vertically (with respect to Tump’s bust).
   4. And finally, the latest error coin addition to his collection. A double struck denarius of Tiberius, 14-37AD. Known as the “Tribute” penny, this example shows two heads of Tiberius at dramatically different angles.

Reminders:

• You can email to Ray a description of what you will show at a meeting, to give him a start on this write-up.
• Send it to cccshowandtell@gmail.com
• After a meeting, all members who viewed the meeting should email him their scoring sheet – a listing of each exhibit number followed by a score (from a low of 1 to a high of 10) is all that is needed.

Our 1293rd Meeting

Important Dates

Unless stated otherwise, our regular monthly CCC Meeting is in downtown Chicago, and also online, on the second Wednesday of the month; the starting time is 6:45PM CT.

Chatter Matter

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Club Officers

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All correspondence pertaining to Club matters should be addressed to the Secretary and mailed to:
CHICAGO COIN CLUB
P.O. Box 2301
CHICAGO, IL 60690
Or email the Secretary at Secretary.ChicagoCoinClub@GMail.com
Payments to the Club, including membership dues, can be addressed to the Treasurer at the above street address.

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