Extremely Rare Dated Drachm

Sale: CNG 81, Lot: 497. Estimate $200.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 20 May 2009.  Sold For $580. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

TROAS, Alexandreia. Circa 102/1-66/5 BC. AR Drachm (3.60 g, 11h). Dated CY 228 (73 BC). Laureate head of Apollo left / Apollo Smintheus standing right, quiver over shoulder, holding bow, arrow, and patera; monogram to inner left, date to inner right, [magistrate’s name in exergue]. Bellinger A164; SNG Copenhagen -. Near VF, surface laminations, cleaning marks. Extremely rare denomination for this dated series (Bellinger records only two drachms, in the BM and Berlin, bearing the years 227 and 228, respectively).

Situated on the coast of Asia Minor, southwest of the site of ancient Troy, Alexandria Troas was founded by Antigonos I Monophthalmos around 310 BC, under the name of Antigoneia. The inhabitants of the new city came from the neighboring towns of Kebren, Kolone, Hamaxitos, Neandria, and Skepsis. About a decade after its founding the place was enlarged by Lysimachos, king of Thrace, who renamed it Alexandria in honor of the memory of Alexander the Great. The city flourished and its prosperity continued into Roman times. This drachm belongs to the period of the city’s autonomy following the devastating defeat of Antiochos III of Syria by the Romans at the battle of Magnesia in 189 BC. Apollo Smintheus is depicted on both sides of the coin, the deity actually being named in the reverse inscription. While the origin of his designation is uncertain, though it may be derived from σμινθος, or mouse, whom the Greeks may have connected with disease; Homer, in the opening pages of the Iliad, has Apollo Smintheus bring down plague on the Greeks because of Agamemnon’s arrogance toward Chryses, the god’s high priest. Apollo Smintheus’ temple lay at Chryse, within the territory of Hamaxitos, one of the cities which had provided the original population of Alexandria. The statue of the god, by the celebrated Parian sculptor and architect Skopas, showed him standing with a mouse at his feet. This particular drachm is part of a series of dated issues that began during the time of Mithradates VI of Pontos (see Callataÿ, pp. 155-9). Consisting primarily of tetradrachms, of which fewer than 40 examples are known, this series was sporadically minted over the course of approximately 50 years. All of these issues bear the same types and monogram, but various magistrates’ names appear in the exergue on their reverses.