A guide to the principal gold and silver coins of the ancients ...

'ERIOD VII. 105
PEKIOD VII.—B.C. 100-1.
On the money of this century we may trace the rapid
extension of the Eoman power in every direction. In
Egypt the series of the Ptolemies ends with the coins of
the famous Cleopatra. The best portrait of this queen is^
however, to be found on a coin of Ascalon (VII. A. 19).
The Syrian series comes to an end in B.C. 69, when the
Armenian Tigranes was deprived of his Syrian dominions
by LucuUus. Iq the far East, the Bactrian and Parthian
coinages continued, losing, however, little by little, their
original Greek character. Throughout Asia Minor, after
the defeat of Mithradates, the Romans became practically
supreme. The coinage of the cistophori was long permitted
by them, but finally, towards the close of ih&
century, none but Roman coins in gold and very few in
silver are to be found. The right of striking bronze money
was, however, very generally conceded by Rome to
local municipalities.
the
In European Greece, the Athenians, who had joined the
party of Mithradates, in B.C. 88, were, probably on the
capture of the city by Sulla, in 86, deprived of the right
of coining. Thus the long series of the tetradrachms of
Athens comes at last to an end. The Romans had, about
B.C. 88, attempted to supplant it by the issue, in the
province of Macedonia, of large quantities of tetradrachms
bearing the names of Quaestors of the province ; but this
coinage does not appear to have been of long duration.
In the north the mints of Maronea and Thasos were active
throughout the first half of the centur5^ Byzantium and
the Thracian communities in that district also continued,
probably down to the close of the century, to issue imitations,
more and more rude in style, of the money of
Alexander and Lysimachus. During the civil wars, after
Pompeius and the Senate had crossed over into Greece,
B.C. 49, both they and the Caesarians issued money in
Greece and Asia Minor, and soon after this none but
Roman coins in gold or silver occur in Greece.