A very neat
rev. type!
Why a second statue of Asclepios in a tree? One could think, maybe a statue in a
grove of trees near the temple was meant, but in that case the artist would probably have depicted a statue base too, and in the
type as rendered the ground line of the statue seems to rest directly on a tree branch, not separated from the tree as though standing behind it in a
grove!
I haven't searched for further specimens in the internet, but in the
standard catalogues only two specimens of this coin seem to have been published, namely
yours from
Wildwinds, which is taken over from
Wildwinds and illustrated in Varbanov's 2nd English edition, no. 5254, though the photo is mislabeled 5253;
and one in
Paris, published by
Ruzicka,
Pautalia, no. 710,
rev. illustrated pl. IV.16, which was taken over by
Varbanov, 2nd ed. 5253 = 1st. (
Bulgarian) ed. 3491.
This specimen seems to come from a different
rev. die than yours, unless it's been rather skillfully
tooled and recut, and its
obv. also is described as being different, just
Head laureate right and a slight variant of the
obv. legend, AV not AVP and NE of ANTĪ©NEINOC
ligate.
So there's the explanation for your two
Varbanov numbers: in the 1st and 2nd ed. respectively of
his work.
As to Senator Traxt, that's apparently just a mistranslation of Ruzicka's
German, describing the figure in the temple as a bearded
man in senatorial clothing, "in senatorischer Tracht"! "Tracht" in
German means "clothing, outfit, attire". The fact that nouns are capitalized in
German apparently misled the translator into thinking "Tracht" was somebody's name. Since "ch" is the transliteration of the Greek chi=X, he decided to replace the ch in Senator Tracht's name with an "x".
