Sale: Nomos 3 & 4, Lot: 1391. Estimate CHF300.  Closing Date: Monday, 9 May 2011.  Sold For CHF1500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

THESSALY, Thessalian League. Circa later 30s - 27 BC. Tetrachalkon or Trihemiobol (Bronze, 23mm, 16.91 g 12), Eubiotos and Petraios. Head of Zeus to right, wearing oak wreath. Rev. ΘΕΣΣΑ / ΛΩΝ The hero Thessalos jumping from his horse, in background galloping to right, onto a bull rushing to right, the head of which he restrains by the use of a band held with both of his hands; above, ΕΥΒΙΟΤΟΥ; below, ΠΕΤΡΑΙΟΣ. Burrer p. 62. Rogers 58 (but misdescribed). SNG Munich 238-240 (but misdescribed). Y. Stoyas, Rare Pseudo-autonomous Issues of the Thessalian League struck in Imperial Times (in modern Greek), Studies Touratsoglou (Athens 2009), p.452, fig. 10 (this coin). Bold and with a dark, brown patina, amongst the clearest examples in existence. Very fine.

The reverse of this coin is taken from the standard types of 5th century Thessalian coinage; it is also a particularly ambitious artistic representation, though it is not, alas, entirely successful. The reprise, in the late 1st century BC of a coin type that dates to the 5th and 4th centuries, is an example of how contemporary viewers both knew about their past, and took pride in it.