277, Lot: 6. Estimate $5000. Sold for $5000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SICILY, Akragas. Circa 409-406 BC. AR Tetradrachm (28mm, 14.52 g, 11h). Charioteer driving fast quadriga right; above, Nike flying left, crowning charioteer; crab in exergue / Two eagles standing right on dead hare lying on rock, one eagle raising its head, the other tearing at hare with beak and raising wings. Seltman, Engravers 6 (dies E/ζ); Rizzo pl. II, 1; SNG Lloyd 818 = Pozzi 388; BMC 57; Dewing 561; Jameson 1889; Ward 139; de Luynes 859 (all from the same dies). VF, toned, corroded surfaces. Rare.

Ex Numismatica Ars Classica E (4 April 1995), lot 2150.

The symbols most associated with the coinage of Akragas are the eagle and the crab. Sometime after 420 BC, the Akragantines replaced the single eagle with a pair of eagles standing on a hare, the inspiration for which must have come from the Agamemnon of Aeschylus where men saw two eagles, representing Agamemnon and Menelaos, feasting upon a pregnant hare. It has always been believed that the city's dekadrachms were issued to celebrate the victory of Exainetos, an Akragantine, at the Olympic Games in 412 BC. It seems more likely, however, that they were part of the war preparations of Akragas against their enemy Carthage shortly before 406 BC.