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Session Five - Tuesday, February 14th 10:00am PST
S
ELDOM
S
EEN
E
ARLY
M
ACEDONIAN
S
ILVER
T
ETRADRACHM
,
CA
. 500-480 BC
Enlargement
1573 Macedonia, Potidaia. Silver Tetradrachm (16.55 g), ca. 500-480 BC
. Poseidon Hippios on horseback right, holding trident on hoseback
right; below, star of eight rays.
Reverse:
Quadripartite incuse square diagonally divided. Alexander period I.B; SNG ANS 688-9; ACGC 471 (this
coin) = Weber 1952 (this coin).
Very Rare.
Toned.
Very Fine
.
Estimate Value ........................................................................................................................................................................... $2,500 - UP
The Hanbery Collection; Purchased privately from F. Kovacs in 1993. Ex Sir Hermann Weber Collection, 1952; Naville IV (17 June 1922), 444.
In ca. 600 BC, Corinthian colonists founded the city of Potidaia in the Chalkidike. This city, whose name literally means "[City] of Poseidon" was
compelled to supply ships and men for the great Persian invasion of mainland Greece by Xerxes I in 480 BC. The following year it, however, it
threw off the Persian yoke and contributed 300 hoplites to fight with the allied Greeks at the battle of Plataia.This tetradrachm was struck around
the time that Xerxes was marching through Thrace and Macedonia or shortly before, when many of the Chalkidic cities were under Persian influ-
ence. The obverse type depicts Poseidon, the patron of the city, in his role as Hippios, the creator of the horse. This is one of the very few occa-
sions on Greek coins, or anywhere else in Greek art, when the god of seas and earthquakes appears mounted, with his trident couched like a
lance and ready to charge his foes.
F
ANTASTIC
T
ROJAN
W
AR
H
ERO
AR T
ETRADRACHM
FROM
S
KIONE
,
CA
. 470-460 BC
Enlargement
1574 Macedonia, Skione. Silver Tetradrachm (1.48 g), ca. 470-460 BC
. Head of Protesilaos right, wearing crested Attic helmet, the crest
inscribed
[] (retrograde).
Reverse:
-K-[I]-O, stern of galley left. within incuse square. SNG ANS -; ACGC 470; Dewing 1076.
Very
Rare.
Lightly toned.
Very Fine
.
Estimate Value ........................................................................................................................................................................... $4,000 - UP
The Hanbery Collection; Purchased privately from F. Kovacs in 1993.
Protesilaos, the son of Iphikles, received special worship at Skione and other cities in Thrace and Thessaly. He appears in the Trojan myth cycle,
first as one of the suitors of Helen and then as one of the regional leaders in the Trojan War. He contributed forty black ships to the cause of
Agamemnon against Paris, but made the fatal mistake of being the first Greek to leap onto the Trojan shores at the outbreak of hostilities. Accord-
ing to the largely lost Cypria epic of Stasinos, an oracle foretold that the first Greek to touch the earth of the Troad would be doomed to die first
in the great Trojan War. The oracle turned out to be true. Protesilaos killed four Trojans in battle after coming ashore, but then he was himself
slain by the mighty Hektor.Because the name of Protesilaos describes his act of leaping first from his ship, some ancient mythographers suggested
that this was a later epithet given to the hero and that his true name was actually Iolaos. Regardless of whether he is correctly referred to as
Protesilaos or Iolaos, his death was a tragedy so great that the gods even permitted his shade to briefly return from Hades in order to bid farewell
his wife, Laodamia. Overcome with grief for the loss of her husband, she had a bronze statue of Protesilaos constructed, which she cared for as if
it were alive. Fearing for her sanity, Laodamia' s father ordered the image melted down, but she followed it into the fire.