Martial's Liber de Spectaculis is almost universally considered a work describing the remarkable 100-day games held by Titus on the inauguration of the new Flavian Amphitheatre in A.D. 80. There is in fact no internal evidence for this attribution, which has been justified by Martial's praise of the building (“it sounds new”) and the inexact parallels between the description of Titus' games in Dio and the events memorialized by Martial. The highpoint of animal activities in Martial concerns the rhinoceros, not mentioned at all by Dio. Under Domitian a sudden, extensive and unparalleled issue of coins with the rhinoceros type signals the advertisement of that rare beast in his games. The coins date to A.D. 83–85. It is to that period, and to the reign of Domitian, that Martial's work should be dated.

This is one of the rarest types of Domitian's coinage, struck somewhere between September 95 and September 96, as shown by the dating of the tribunician power. The issue of TR P XV was known to Cohen only from a piece in trade (Rollin), and to Mattingly in BMCRE only from Cohen. Since the publication of BMCRE vol. 2, an example has been acquired by the British Museum and a few others have appeared on the market. To this day there is no example of it in the extensive collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. As to TR P XVI, no-one knew that the type had been struck up to that date until an example surfaced in the Mazzini collection, the only one ever to have been seen.

The type was obviously struck in very small quantities, given the few examples that survive. The issues of TR P XV and TR P XVI were struck from the same reverse die, which suggests that the first was probably produced late in the tribunician year, say late August to mid-September of 96. The TR P XVI issue was probably struck for less than a week, Domitian's dies imperii falling on 14 September and his assassination on the 18th. It is reasonable to suppose, too, that the rarity of the latest coinage reflects the murder: any stocks of Domitian's coin still held at the mint or in the Aerarium would have been reduced to raw metal and re-used for Nerva.

A third season of excavation and finds analysis at Euesperides in March/April 1998 completed the fieldwork of the project begun in 1995.

Further examination of the city defences suggests that their first phase should be dated not later than the early sixth century BC. The earliest masonry buildings within (and abutting) the city wall seem to belong to the 580s/570s BC. Other discoveries included a plain pebble pavement and a decorated ‘mixed style’ mosaic which should pre-date c. 250 BC, as well as an enchytrismos burial of the fourth century BC. The preliminary results of detailed study of the coins, pottery and lamps, and of scientific analyses of wallplaster and metal, are also presented.

The coinage of Euesperides was always minor in comparison with that of Cyrene, or even of Barca. But its sporadic issues do have an interest of their own. At this session we are also concerned with the city, and I wish to suggest what we can learn from the numismatic evidence — not just from the coins struck there, but from the coins of other mints which have been found there.

It is preferable to speak generally of the ‘coinage’ of Euesperides rather than of its ‘mint’, for it seems certain that some of the issues bearing the city's name were actually produced at Cyrene, as indeed were also some issues of Barca. The coinage of Euesperides was always small in comparison with the older and much richer coinage of Cyrene. It is instructive that the catalogue proper of Robinson's BMC Cyrenaica requires 90 pages to list the autonomous and Ptolemaic coins struck at Cyrene, 18 for those of Barca, just 4 for Euesperides.

For Euesperides there are no archaic tetradrachms, the denomination so prominent in a variety of types at Cyrene. The earliest Euesperidean coin in BMC, a drachm of types silphium/dolphin, is assigned by Robinson to before 480 BC.

The Roman aureus exchanged for 25 denarii. The evidence for the equation, all literary, has reached us rather indirectly. The earliest preserved source is Claudius Didymus (first century A.D.), quoted in Priscian; in the second century Lucian equated 30 aurei with 750 denarii; in the third, Dio 55, 12, 3–5, a lost passage entirely reconstructed from the epitomes of Xiphilinus and Zonaras, put the exchange directly (p. 41, [3] below). In addition, the exchange can be inferred from two parallel passages: Suetonius relates that when Otho entertained Galba at dinner he regularly gave each member of the guard an aureus (Otho 4, 2 = Plutarch, Galba 20, 4, χρυσοῦς); Tacitus tells the same story, using the words ‘centenos nummos divideret’ (Hist. 1, 24).