Impressive Naxos Drachm

Triton XVII, Lot: 55. Estimate $75000. Sold for $80000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SICILY, Naxos. Circa 461 BC. AR Drachm (18mm, 4.29 g, 4h). Bearded head of Dionysos right, wearing tainia decorated with an ivy branch / Silenos, nude and bearded, squatting half-left, holding kantharos in right hand and resting his left on his knee, tail behind; N-A-XI-ON around; all within shallow concave circular incuse. Cahn 55 (V40/R46); Rizzo pl. XXVIII, 13; SNG Lloyd 1151 = Weber 1467; Basel 385; SNG Lockett 841 = Pozzi 508; Jameson 674; de Luynes 1063; McClean 2467 (all from the same dies). Choice EF, lightly toned. Well centered and excellent metal.

Located on the eastern shore of Sicily in the shadow of Mt. Aitna, Naxos was the oldest of the Greek colonies on the island, founded in 735 BC by colonists from Chalkis in Euboia and Ionia. According to the historian Thucydides (1.100), Naxos established its own colony by founding Leontini in 730 BC, which was soon followed by the foundation of a second colony, Aitne, later known as Katane. Owing to the fertility of the surrounding volcanic soil of Mt. Aitna, Naxos developed an economy of viticulture, and along with Leontini and Katane, became very prosperous. This wealth attracted the attention of Syracuse, which subjugated Naxos in 476 BC, removing its citizens along with those of Katane to Leontini. Upon the death of Hieron in 461 BC, the Naxians were reinstated to their original city, and formed a close alliance with Leontini and Katane. During the first Athenian Expedition in 427 BC, Naxos actively provided support to the Athenians, who had sent a large fleet to support the allies against Syracuse. In 409 BC, Naxos sided with Syracuse against the Carthaginian threat to Sicily, but in 403 BC, the tyrant Dionysios of Syracuse turned against the Naxians, destroying the city and selling the women and children into slavery.

This issue features Dionysos, the god of the vine, on the obverse, as wine was the primary export for which Naxos was well known, and it provided great wealth for the venerable polis. The reverse is also an allusion to wine and the Dionysiac cult, featuring the satyr Silenos. Half-man, half goat followers of Dionysos, these satyrs were often depicted in an ithyphallic state as they pursued the god’s female attendants, the mainads. Silenos was the oldest, wisest, and most drunken of the satyrs, and according to Euripides’ only surviving satyr-play, the Cyclops, he had been forced to attend Polyphemos, who dwelled in the region of Mt. Aitna, and hence another reason for its use on this coin of Naxos.