Very Rare Mythological Type

274, Lot: 276. Estimate $600. Sold for $3250. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

LYDIA, Tralles. Tranquillina. Augusta, AD 241-244. Æ (29mm, 10.93 g, 12h). Philippus Centaurus, magistrate. Diademed and draped bust right / Io standing right in the door of her father’s cow-shed, clasping hands with Zeus who stands facing her. BMC -; SNG Copenhagen -; SNG von Aulock -; Lindgren II A842 (this coin). VF, brown patina. Very Rare.

Ex Henry Clay Lindgren Collection.

The reverse type of this coin may depict the meeting of Zeus with the nymph Io in her father’s boustasis, or cow-shed. Dr. Barclay Head argued in Numismatic Chronicle 1903 that this may be a scene from the nuptials of Io, as represented at Tralles during festival times in commemoration of the remote Argive origin of the city. Alternatively, the scene could represent a later incident in which Io is restored to sanity (and her human form) by Zeus in Egypt. (NC (1903), p. 338).As the legend goes, Io was the daughter of the river god Inachus and was seduced by Zeus. When they were about to be discovered by Zeus’s wife, Hera, Zeus changed Io into a pure white heifer to conceal his indiscretion (which perhaps helps to explain the significance of their first meeting place). Hera, seeing through her husband’s deception, demanded the heifer as a gift, and Zeus reluctantly agreed. Hera then set the many-eyed watchman Argos Panoptes to guard Io, but Zeus sent Hermes to free her, which he did by lulling Argos to sleep and then killing him. In order to keep them apart, Hera then sent a gadfly to mercilessly torment Io, forcing her to wander across vast swaths of Europe and Asia. During her wanderings she lent her name to several of the places she visited, such as the Ionian Sea and the Bosporus (literally “ox-ford”). She eventually arrived in Egypt and was returned to human form by Zeus, after which she gave birth to their son Epaphos.