167, Lot: 29. Estimate $500. Sold for $710. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SICILY, Selinos. Circa 455-409 BC. AR Tetradrachm (26mm, 17.15 g). Artemis driving quadriga left, Apollo beside her drawing bow / Draped figure of river-god Selinos standing left, holding phiale over altar and branch; rooster on altar; to right, selinon leaf and bull on basis. SNG ANS -; SNG Copenhagen 599 (same obv. die). VF, die flaws and corrosion.

From the C. G. Collection. Ex Classical Numismatic Group 41 (19 March 1997), lot 204.

Traditionally, the coin types of Selinos have been explained as graphic representations of a tale associated with the Sicilian philosopher Empedokles, a "natural philosopher" who was credited with miraculous cures and the manipulation of natural forces. According to Diogenes Laertes, writing in the third century AD, the people of Selinos implored Empedokles to relieve them of the effects of the pestilential marshes surrounding their city. To accomplish this, he first incorporated the course of one nearby river into another; he then flushed out the marshes with this combined flow. The iconography is made to fit the tradition: the bull and marsh bird become the rivers Selinos and Hypsas; Apollo becomes Alexikakos, the relief of illness; the rooster and serpent represent Askelpios, son of Apollo and the first physician; and Herakles subduing the Cretan bull signifies man's conquest over nature.

Recent scholarship, however, has tended to throw the traditional interpretation into doubt, since it fits neither the facts nor geography, and the symbols only represent the shrines dedicated to Selinos and Hypsas with their associated cults. Given the character of Diogenes’ story-telling, it is possible that the coin type influenced the tale, rather than the other way around.