C 28 ] 
furrounded by the infcription AAPAANOEEHNfXN, 
D ARDANOSSENORVM, or D ARDANOSSENSIVM, which 
evidently points at the inhabitants of fome antient 
town. Not one of the letters, either of the legend 
or infcription, has buffered greatly from the injuries 
of time. 
Who the Dardanoffenians were, or in what part of 
the world lituated, 1 muft not take upon me abfo- 
lutely to decide ; the word AAPAANOEEA, dar- 
danossa, not appearing, as the name of a city, 
in any antient writer. But that this word occurred, 
in fuch a fenfe, in the original text (i) of Ptolemy, and 
was afterwards converted by fome ignorant tranfcri- 
ber into daranissa, which ftill remains in all the 
printed and manufcript copies of that author, will, 
I perfuade myfelf, not be contefted by the critics of 
the prefent age. The coin therefore was ftruck at 
Dardanoffa, or Daraniffa, which feems to have been 
a town feated in Sophene, a province of the Greater 
Armenia, in the reign of the emperor Commodus, 
where the Roman power at that time prevailed. And 
this is confonant to the faith of hiltory ( 2 ), from 
whence we learn, that the conqueft of Armenia was 
efFe&ed, after the redu&ion of Artaxata, by Statius 
Prifcus, not many years before Commodus afcended 
the imperial throne. Nay, the whole country is faid to 
have been conquered, and reduced to the form of a 
Roman province, in the days of Trajan. The figure 
of the Sigma likewife on this medal, fo fimilar 
to the form of that element on certain Armenian 
(1) Ptol. Gcograph. Lib. V. c. 13. 
(2) Dio, Lib. LXVIII. Jul. Cupitolin. in Marc. Si in Vtr. 
Lu'.Ln. p. 347. Jamblichus spud Photium, p. 242. 
coins 
