Satala – Armenia Minor

Under Roman rule before the 4th century, Satala was usually managed by Cappadocia (a Roman province in eastern Asia Minor, now within present-day Turkey). Similarly governed was its home region of Armenia Minor, which was also a province, bordering Armenia proper. To help restrain Rome’s archenemy Parthia on the other side of the buffer state, a legionary fortress was established at Satala under Emperor Vespasian (r. A.D. 69-79), making it the most northern link in the chain that comprised Rome’s eastern frontier or limes (limit).

---

---

Satala’s name is a puzzling matter. Its etymology is unclear, although the Turkish village of Sadak, which partly overlies the ancient site, was probably derived from Satala. The archaeologist Dr. Christopher Lightfoot speculated to me that the name could be of Anatolian origin, predating even the arrival of the ancient Greeks to the area.

The Byzantine historian Procopius, writing under Justinian the Great (r. A.D. 527-565), noted that Satala “lies in a low lying plain and is dominated by many hills which tower around it.” This is still true today. The choice of militarizing this lonely, isolated site, which had become an official city in the civilian sense no later than the 4th century and was heavily refurbished in the 6th, is something of an enigma to Lightfoot. Yet two Roman legions would call it home for centuries: Legio XVI Flavia Firma (“The Sixteenth Legion, Flavian and Steadfast,” A.D. c. 71-c. 114), and Legio XV Apollinaris (“The Fifteenth Apollinarian Legion,” c. 114 to at least the 5th century, according to the Notitia Dignitatum).

---

---

In modern times, little could be seen of the castrum (Roman military camp) or attached city until recently. Historian Jona Lendering remarks on his livius.org website,

I am not betraying a big secret if I say that the site of the legionary fortress of Satala, east of modern Sadak, is not Turkey’s most spectacular archaeological monument. There are no beautiful statues, there are—with one exception—no impressive buildings, and there are not even small architectural remains.

The one exception was the five-pier “aqueduct,” shown by Lightfoot and others to be the remnants of a basilica of uncertain age.

Turkish archaeologists have been excavating the fortress since 2017 and have uncovered numerous artifacts, including a suit of late Roman scale armor called lorica squamata, the first of its kind found largely intact. Even so, nothing yet can outshine the “Satala Aphrodite,” a larger-than-life bronze sculpture in Hellenistic style, commonly dated to the 1st century B.C. The head and left hand were unearthed in around 1872 in a farmer’s field within the legionary fortress and eventually sold to the British Museum.

So far, there is no hint that Satala was ever a coin-issuing city. The historian and traveler Timothy Mitford wrote in Volume 1 of East of Asia Minor: Rome’s Hidden Frontier, “There is no evidence that a colony was established at any period at or in the vicinity of Satala. Nor was money [i.e. coinage] struck there” (p. 333). His tune had changed, however, by 2021, with the publication of Discovering Rome’s Eastern Frontier: On Foot Through a Vanished World: “There is no evidence that a colony was established. But there was seemingly a mint. A bronze coin seized by police from metal detectors near the fortress, and now in the Erzincan Museum shows, perhaps, a young Commodus; while the reverse depicts the legionary gryphon crouched above LEG XV” (p. 265).

---

---

I came to a similar conclusion in 2022, when a bronze coin of Commodus appeared at auction with the same Latin inscription on the lower reverse. Above the letters, however, was a nude depiction of Apollo holding a bow and branch. Unlike the griffin below, the coin was a previously unrecorded member of the growing group of LEG XV votive coins attributed to Legio XV Apollinaris. It became a springboard for me to study the coin as a precursor, at a time when worn (and rare) showings up on Catalogs and in photos, plus RPC Online for the latest discoveries. As the largest of the recorded LEG XV denominations, could the standing Apollo type bear the forgotten emblem of the Fifteenth Legion? A new link to Satala was established by my identification of coin no. 7 in the stray coin find catalog in Lightfoot’s article “The Coins from Satala” in the Royal Numismatic Society Special Publication, Studies in Ancient Coinage from Turkey(1996).

The legionary coins were seemingly intended for Satala (and the surrounding region), but were they truly minted at the fortress under Commodus? Burnett confessed that he favors the simple answer, but let us also consider Cappadocian Caesarea, which had been the chief supplier of bronze and silver coinage for the region for centuries. During the rebellion of Pescennius Niger (A.D. 193-194), Caesarea issued silver denarii in his name. We know this because many of them were paired with reverses used for Caesarean drachms! They show that Caesarea did, on occasion, strike coins with Latin inscriptions.

---

---

The decision to mint the Satala coins (which, according to Burnett, are in themselves evidence of there having been a Roman colony) may have been in response to a severe shortage of small change. Other Roman provincial coins countermarked with LXY (or similar) are known for the cities of Caesarea and Tyana in Cappadocia, Nicopolis ad Lycum in Pontus, Aradus in Phoenicia, Syrian Antioch, Neapolis in Samaria, and Philomelium in Phrygia. All are either neighbors of Satala or cities whose coins could conceivably be found in circulation at the military camp. But apparently the countermarking to show what mishmash of coins were accepted by the legion was not enough. Caesarea mostly stopped minting bronze coins at the tail end of the Roman-Parthian War of A.D. 161-166, while Tyana did so entirely c. 162. Neither would start up normal production again until many years later—near the end of Commodus’s reign c. 188 for Caesarea and c. 196 for Tyana.

The apparent solution to the suspected shortage appears to be the LEG XV coins, specifically made for the legion at Satala, thereby enriching not only the soldiers, but also numismatics. And if they are anything to go by, we will have no shortage of such discoveries in the foreseeable future.

---

The following excerpt is taken from Mark Fox’s article, “Four ‘New’ Ancient Mints,” published in The Numismatist (American Numismatic Association, January 2025, pp. 43–45). This section specifically discusses Satala and its connection to Armenia. The remainder of the article focuses on other mints unrelated to Armenia.