The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal ... - IndianCoins.org

202 C. OMAN.nor would she loose her clasp when the guards tried todrag her away. Whereupon one of them, irritated byher shrieks and imprecations, raised his sword and cutthrough both her wrists, so that she fell down andbled to death.It may have been this horrid incident which turnedthe hearts of men so much against Grypus and hishouse, that in the next year he was completely defeatedby Philopator, lost Antioch, and was driven out notonly from Syria, but from Cilicia also. His bloodthirstyqueen Tryphaena was captured by the victor,who put her to death in revenge for the murder of hisown wife. Grypus had to abandon his kingdom altogether,and flew to Aspendus in Pamphylia, in theland of the Cilician pirates, where he was in exile fortwo years (113-111 B.C.). Meanwhile Philopator, inpossession of nearly the whole realm, was striking inthese years two types of tetradrachm which are veryrarethe one at Tarsus with the local reverse ofSandan's Altar, the other with the figure of Zeusseated, a favourite old Seleucid type which belongsespecially to the mint of Antioch. There was no otherperiod of Philopator's twenty years' reign in which hewas in solid possession of both these places for a considerabletime, and the type of his portrait on themshows that these issues belong to his early manhood.For he is clean-shaven on all the Antiochene and mostof the Tarsiot pieces, while on all his later coins, datedfrom 111 onwards, he shows a short bushy beard, whichhe wore till his death in 95 B. o. It is clear then thatthese rare tetradrachms belong to the period of hisgreatest prosperity, and of his half-brother's exile in113-111 B.C.