150 Year Pedigree - Ex Allantini, Benson, Bunbury, & Northwick

Sale: CNG 82, Lot: 284. Estimate $5000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 16 September 2009.  Sold For $5000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SICILY, Selinos. Circa 455-409 BC. AR Tetradrachm (16.97 g, 1h). Artemis, holding reins, driving quadriga left; beside her, Apollo standing left, drawing bow / Selinos standing left, holding palm frond and phiale over altar to left; before altar, cock standing left; to right, selinon leaf above bull standing left on basis. Schwabacher 11g (Q3/S11 – this coin); SNG ANS 692; BMC 28; Jameson 721 (all from the same dies). VF, old cabinet toning.

Ex Numismatica Genevensis IV (11 December 2006), lot 46; Roberto Allatini Collection (Ars Classica XIII, 27 June 1928), lot 247; Frank Sherman Benson Collection (Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, 3 February 1909), lot 266; Edward Herbert Bunbury Collection (Part 1, Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, 15 June 1895), lot 386; Lord Northwick Collection (Sotheby & Wilkinson, 5 December 1859), lot 327.

None of the sales of this coin list the Northwick pedigree; only Schwacbacher does, in his die study of the series. The reason is that in the Bunbury sale, the Northwick pedigree is incorrectly listed on lot 387. This mistake is clear by virtue of the description of that lot, which notes the obverse legend runs right to left (it is retrograde). In the Northwick catalog, the legend is listed as “ΣEΛINONT.” without mention of it being retrograde (where other lots in the sale clearly mark such legends). No other Selinos coins in the Northwick sale can possibly be the same as Bunbury 387, so the Northwick pedigree must have been listed erroneously for that lot. In contrast, the weight and description of the present coin are a perfect match for the Northwick coin.

Situated on the southwest coast of Sicily at the mouth of the Selinunte River, Selinos was founded by colonists from Megara Hyblaia, a town on the eastern coast of the island. The coinage of Selinos regularly featured a wild parsley leaf, since the ancient Greek name for this, selinos, provided an allusive pun on the town’s name. The reverse design of the fifth-century BC tetradrachms struck by Selinos, however, are more challenging to interpret Head argued that the design represented the cure of a local plague by the philosopher Empedokles, an event related by the third-century AD philosopher Diogenes Laertius (8.2.70). The iconography does appear to confirm this interpretation: the the local river-god, now no longer in his traditional form as a man-headed bull (necessitating perhaps the inclusion of a bull into the scene), is seen holding a lustral branch and sacrificing at an altar (of Apollo?), which is attended by a cock, a bird sacred to Asklepios, the god of healing (cf. Plato, Phaedo 117a-118). The association of Apollo with Asklepios is more than coincidental: Apollo was the father of Asklepios, and in his role as ἀλεξίκακος, Apollo was able to relieve the destruction which he (as well as his sister Artemis, seen together with him on the obverse) could also create in his role as σμίνθευς, the bringer of plague.