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Research Coins: Feature Auction

 
Sale: Triton V, Lot: 1200. Estimate $30000. 
Closing Date: Wednesday, 16 January 2002. 
Sold For $44000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SICILY, Segesta. Circa 400 BC. AR Tetradrachm (17.04 gm). EGESTAIWN, the hero Egestes nude right, with cap slung over shoulder and chlamys over left arm, resting left foot on rock; two hounds at his feet with one sniffing the ground; small ithyphallic herm before / SEGESTAXIA, head of the nymph Segesta right, wearing triple-pendant earring and a necklace with pendants, hair bound in ampyx and a star embroidered sakkos; stalk of barley below. Rizzo pl. lxii, 14 (same dies); Lederer 6; Mildenberg, "Kimon in the Manner of Segesta," in Proceedings of the 8th International Congress of Numismatics, pl. 11, 21 (same dies); McClean 2555 (same dies); Kraay-Hirmer pl. 71, 203 (same dies). Toned EF, well struck and perfectly centered. Very rare! ($30,000)

From the William N. Rudman Collection.

This fine obverse is combined with three other reverses, all imitating Syracuse with great panache, including the facing head after Kimon. Our coin pairs the only obverse die with a reverse inspired by the celebrated Arethusa reverse die magnificently engraved by Euainetos, working at Syracuse in about 405 (see Franke-Hirmer 101; Rizzo pl. 43, 3; Tudeer 41; AMB 472). Mildenberg, op. cit., suggests that the occasion for this exceptional coinage would be as a demonstration of political independence on the part of a city halfway between the Greek and Carthaginian world, at the time of Dionysos I's peace treaty with Carthage in 404.