The Liberation of Thebes

Sale: Triton XI, Lot: 147. Estimate $40000.  Closing Date: Monday, 7 January 2008.  Sold For $45000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

BOEOTIA, Federal Coinage. Circa 287 BC. AR Tetradrachm (17.13 g, 12h). Attic standard. Laureate head of Poseidon right, wearing hair long at neck / BOI-WTWN, Poseidon, holding dolphin in his right hand and trident in his left, seated left on throne with lion's legs at the front and decorated on its side with a Boiotian shield. BCD Boiotia 81 (same rev. die); Head, Boeotia p. 83; Gulbenkian 920 = Jameson 2065 = Weber 3303 (same rev. die); De Luynes 1980 (same obv. die). EF, small area of flat strike on beard. Extremely rare.

After years of languishing under Macedonian rule, Thebes was granted autonomy by Demetrios I Poliorketes in 287 BC. Among the rights recovered was the right to strike a civic coinage, and this magnificent Hellenistic tetradrachm was the first series for the rejuvenated city (see Newell pp. 126-128 and pl. XV, 7 illustrating a coin of the ANS). Jenkins argues in Gulbenkian II, p. 123, that the obverse head is that of Poseidon. It is not unheard of to have the same deity on both sides of a coin and Poliorketes would certainly approve of the double depiction of his patron god. It also appears that the obverse die of this coin was engraved by another artist and not by the celator who produced its reverse die with the seated Poseidon, the head of whom is a replica of the head of the standing god engraved by the same artist on the contemporary tetradrachms of the Macedonian king.