Zankle Becomes Messana

Sale: Triton XI, Lot: 47. Estimate $5000.  Closing Date: Monday, 7 January 2008.  Sold For $5400. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SICILY, Messana (as Zankle). Circa 500-493 BC. AR Drachm (5.66 g). DANKLE, Dolphin swimming left within sickle-shaped harbor / Nine-part incuse square with scallop shell in center. Gielow 55 (same obv. die); SNG ANS 300 (same obv. die); SNG Lloyd 1075-6; SNG Ashmolean 1818; Basel 359. Good VF, toned, die rust on obverse.

The colony of Zankle was founded by Cumaean and Euboean settlers in the eighth century BC on the straits of Messina. Its name, meaning "sickle", was taken from its important sickle-shaped harbor. The colony prospered and even founded its own colonies at Mylae and Himera. Zankle was soon overshadowed by Rhegion, though, whose tyrant, Anaxilas, seized the colony around 488 BC and renamed the city Messana, after Peloponnesian Messenia, whose colonists he settled in Zankle.