Two Very Rare Alaisa Archonidea Hemilitra

CNG 97, Lot: 22. Estimate $1000. Sold for $1600. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SICILY, Alaisa Archonidea. 344-339/8 BC. Æ Hemilitron (24mm, 12.76 g, 9h). Timoleontic Symmachy coinage. Head of the nymph Pelorias left, hair bound in ampyx and sphendone decorated with a star / Torch between two grain ears. Campana 4 corr. (obv. legend and type); CNS II (Symmachy) 13 corr. (same); Basel 274 corr. (same; same dies); Virzi 737–8; Freedman Collection (Triton V), lot 138 and front cover, corr. (obv. legend; same dies); HGC 2, 187 corr. (same). VF, dark green-brown patina, minor smoothing. Very rare.

From the Trinacria Collection. Ex Tony Hardy Collection (Classical Numismatic Group 67, 22 September 2004), lot 234; Numismatica Ars Classica 21 (17 May 2001), lot 55 (incorrectly noting coin as ex Basel 274 and NAC 13, lot 274).

Prior to the sale of the Freedman piece in Triton V, none of the published examples had an obverse legend visible or legible, and the head was traditionally identified as Sicily, based on a similar type with the head right that bore the legend ΣIKEΛIA (CNS II [Symmachy] 12). The Freedman coin, though, clearly showed that the legend along the left edge on the present type is actually a retrograde ΠEΛΩPI, which allowed the head to be correctly identified as the nymph Pelorias. One correction to the Triton V lot description is necessary to further clarify the full ethnic, and dispel a controversy. Basel 274, struck from the same obverse die as the Freedman and present coins, has three letters visible, an I below the chin, an A below the portrait, and a Σ to the right of the neck, which the authors plausibly interpreted as the first and two final letters of the traditionally-identified ethnic, ΣIKEΛIA, running counter-clockwise from behind the neck. The A and Σ are not visible on the Freedman coin, but, rather than contradict the revised reading, the Basel 274 partial legend allows us to see the correct legend in its entirety: ΠEΛΩPIAΣ.