Two Exceptional Staters for Androkleidas

Sale: Triton XIII, Lot: 1178. Estimate $750.  Closing Date: Monday, 4 January 2010.  Sold For $1300. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

BOEOTIA, Thebes. Circa 395-338 BC. AR Stater (12.16 g). Andr(okleidas)-, magistrate. Struck circa 390-382 BC. Boeotian shield / Amphora with elongated foot; AN-ΔP across central field; all within concave circle. BCD Boiotia 499; Hepworth 4; Myron Hoard pl. Γ, 33; BMC 112. VF, minor die break on reverse. Well centered on a broad flan.

For the role of Androkleidas as one of the leading Theban nationalists and his eventual exile and assassination in Athens see Hepworth, Epaminondas' coinage, pp. 38-9. One wonders if the conspicuously large flans encountered in almost the entire coinage of this magistrate have some special significance related to the closing stages of the power-struggle that was taking place in Thebes before 382 BC and which culminated in the Spartan intervention and seizure of the Kadmeia in that year.