Lot 5
Bruttium. Caulonia, c. 520 BC. AR Nomos-Stater, Achaean standard (8.14 g). Apollo, nude, his hair bound with taenia, advances right, brandishing a laurel(?) branch in his upraised hand, and supporting in his outstretched hand a small running figure, his head turned back, regardant, and also holding a branch in each hand; stag standing to right on dotted ground line, his head turned back regardant; ethnic in left field; all within dotted cable border. Reverse: Reverse of Apollo and stag of obverse, but in incuse, with raised lines detailing small figure, stag's antlers, and laurel branch; border with hatching. Cf. Kraay/Hirmer 259; HN III 2035; Noe 2p (this coin); Sear 252 = BMC p. 335, 9 (same obverse die); SNG ANS 141. A superb example, in lovely, robust and exhuberant archaic style. Beautifully toned and sharply struck. Rare this nice. NGC graded About Uncirculated.
Many of the most revered and artistic Greek coins were minted in Southern Italy and Sicily, the area called Magna Graecia. The city of Caulonia was repeatedly razed; her coinage reflects these troubled times. Finally, in 389 BC under Dionysios I, the city became a completely abandoned and utterly ruined town. Constant throughout her numismatic history, however, was the symbolic use of the Delphian Apollo figure, most wonderfully depicted on the town's archaic staters, or nomoi. Both "stater" and "nomos" (as singular nouns) denote the standard unit of coinage, with "nomos" being more frequently used in Southern Italy.
Numismatists like Jacob Hirsch produced some of the finest sale catalogues early in the 20th century. The time consumed in preparing plaster casts of each of the coins, plus the expense of the beautiful black-and-white collotype plates, placed these references above and beyond what was normally seen. It is a great pleasure for today's numismatists to refer to past appearances, or provenances, of these selected gems of ancient coinage. Normally we don't have the privilege of knowing the previous whereabouts of coins, but each of these present offerings will have the future prestige of "ex Millennia Collection."
Estimated Value $12,000 - 15,000.
From the de Guermantes Collection, ex Jacob Hirsch, Liste XVII, February 1907, no. 291; and J. Hirsch, Liste XVI, December 1906, no. 159. Illustrated in Money of the World, coin 13.
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| Realized $23,000 |
