Wonderful Sacrificial Scene

254, Lot: 191. Estimate $300. Sold for $575. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

TROAS, Ilium. Faustina Junior. Augusta, AD 147-175. Æ (27mm, 11.47 g, 12h). Bareheaded and draped bust right / Male figure sacrificing a bull suspended in tree, occurring before a statue of Athena Ilias on tall pedestal. Bellinger T167 = SNG München 249 (same rev. die); von Fritze 69. VF, minor scattered roughness. Highly interesting type.

Some have sought to identify the male performing the sacrifice as a mythological figure, most frequently Ilos, the ktistes (founder) of Ilium. He received a cow as a prize for winning a wrestling competition and was instructed to found a city wherever the cow took rest, which it did, of course, at Ilium. After praying for a sign from Zeus there appeared the cult statue of Athen Ilias (otherwise known as the Palladion), to which the cow was sacrificed, and as long as the cult image remained at Ilium the city would remain safe. There is no mythological allusion to the ritual, however, and von Fritze notes that the figure is wearing the exomis, the dress of craftsmen and servants, which would be quite unfitting for the legendary founder. He cites inscriptions that allude to raising the sacrificial victim, which appears to have been performed by some initiates of the Eleusinian mysteries, particularly epheboi, though this was not the norm. In any case, the appearance of a cow suspended on a column on a 2nd century BC tetradrachm of Ilium (see Bellinger T80) demonstrates that the practice was long established at the city.