BITHYNIA. Dia. Early to mid 1st century BC. AE (Bronze, 17 mm, 5.73 g, 12 h). XABAKTΩN Laureate head of Zeus to right. Rev. ΔIAΔEΩ[N] Eagle standing right on thunderbolt, wings closed and head to left. HGC -. SNG BM Black Sea -. SNG Stancomb -. SNG von Aulock -. Apparently unpublished and unique, a highly interesting issue. Repatinated and with a fault on the obverse, otherwise, good very fine.


Unfortunately, the beginning of the reverse legend on this highly interesting coin is a bit weak, but the most likely reading is ΔIAΔEΩ[N], '[coin] of the inhabitants of Dia'. Dia was a small settlement on the Bithynian coast of which little is known other than that it issued bronze coins of the usual Mithradatic types in the 1st century BC. Remarkably, these coins all carry the genitive singular legend 'of Dia', much like their relatives from mints such as Amisos, Amaseia, Laodikeia, Pharnakeia, or Sinope. It has been suggested that this singular reflects royal control over the mints, as civic issues would normally end in a genitive plural, an argument that is further corroborated by the similar designs and fabrics of the coins, which no doubt go back to centralized royal organization, if not production, of the output under Mithradates VI.

However, it is worth noting that a considerable number of mints under Mithradates VI also used the genitive plural (Chabakta, Gazioura, Kabeira, Komana, and Taulara), which undermines the idea of a 'royal' genitive singular. Furthermore, the tempting idea of assigning the legends in singular to simple fortresses and the ones in plural to poleis cannot be true either, since many of the mints using legends in plural were clearly much more insignificant than venerable cities such as Amisos or Sinope. Thus, the exact reason as to why a city used the singular or the plural is unknown, but if our reading of the ethnic on our coin is correct, it marks the sole known example of a city using both singular and plural on its Mithradatic types.