EKIXIPIA is not a word I can recall ever seeing before on a
Roman provincial coin. Not surprising, first since my chief interest for most of my collecting life was
Roman imperials not
provincials, and second because the first scholar to correctly decipher and explain this word on a number of
provincials of Valerian and
Gallienus at Tarsus was Ruprecht
Ziegler in
his book Städtisches Prestige und kaiserliche Politik: Studien zum Festwesen in Ostkilikien im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert n. Chr., 1985, pp. 29-31.
EKIXIPIA,
Ziegler argues, must be a late antique spelling of the classical Greek word εκεχειρια, defined thus in my Greek dictionary: "a holding of
hands, a cessation of hostilities, armistice." In particular, the word
applied to the truce that was declared to allow competitors and spectators to travel to and from and participate safely in the Olympics and other Greek games. Under the
Roman empire, since safe travel and participation were already guaranteed by the government, the sense of the word changed and it came mainly to mean the cessation of official activities, especially trials, during the games. The word is found with this sense in a number of inscriptions relating to games under the empire, but
Ziegler was the first to find it on Tarsus coins of Valerian and
Gallienus. On coins of
Trajan Decius at Tarsus the word seems to be new: unknown to
Ziegler, and not in
RPC IX.I of 2016. Ziegler's guess at the identity of the two figures in your
reverse type, which he knew on coins of both Valerian and
Gallienus: the female figure might be
Eirene (
Pax) or Εκεχειρια herself, the male figure might be a herald whose duty was to travel and announce the games.
The Γ after EKIXIPIAI on the
Gallienus coin, incidentally, is I think just the second Γ of AMKΓΓ, because no space could be found for that letter in the right
field.
