SIKYONIA

Sale: CNG 81, Lot: 2044. Estimate $1000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 20 May 2009.  Sold For $1100. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SIKYONIA, Sikyon. Circa 500/490-450 BC. AR Drachm (5.87 g, 10h). Dove alighting left / Large letter san oriented vertically within an incuse rectangle. BCD Peloponnesos 154. Near VF, toned. Extremely rare early issue without floral ornament, one of only two in the BCD Collection.

Ex BCD Collection (not in LHS sale); Peus 288 (30 September 1975), lot 205.

Located in the northeast of the Peloponnesos, Sikyonia was a fertile territory stretching some sixteen miles. Sikyon, the area’s most important city and one of the Mediterranean’s most well-renowned artistic centers, was the site where legend holds that Prometheus famously deceived Zeus. The city joined Sparta during the Peloponnesian War and provided the bulk of the coinage used by the Peloponnesian League. In 303 BC, Demetrios Poliorketes re-founded Sikyon further inland, giving it the short-lived name of Demetrias. Sikyon’s output of coinage was large and uninterrupted from the 5th-1st centuries BC. The city’s status was diminished when Corinth was made a Roman colony and, aside from a small issue under Nero, Sikyon did not mint coins until the reign of Septimius Severus.