Sale: Triton VI, Lot: 88. Estimate $10000.  Closing Date: Monday, 13 January 2003.  Sold For $6750. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

BRUTTIUM, Rhegion. Circa 435-425 BC. AR Tetradrachm (17.28 gm). Lion's scalp facing / RECINOS (retrograde), Iocastos seated left with legs crossed, holding staff in right hand, left hand resting on stool. Herzfelder 52d (D31/R43) = Jameson 457 = Basel 221 (this coin); SNG ANS 640 (same dies). Beautifully toned, good VF. (See color enlargement on plate 6.) ($10,000) 

Ex Numismatica Ars Classica 13 (8 October 1998), lot 221; R. Jameson Collection, 457; Sir Arthur Evans Collection.

The seated figure on the reverse of the early coins of Rhegion is shown either as a muscular young man or a mature bearded figure. He holds a staff and either a phiale or kantharos. Adjunct symbols are the dog, serpent, duck, crow and grapes. He was first identified as Iokastos, the oikistes, or founder, of Rhegion, by J.P. Six in Numismatic Chronicle (1898), pp. 281-285. Prior to that, the most popular candidate was Aristaeos or Agreus, son of Apollo and Kyrene, cf. Head, Historia Numorum (1st ed.,1889). Iokastos was one of six sons of Aiolos, ruler of the Aeolian islands, all of whom secured their own realms in Italy and Sicily. Iokastos held the region around Rhegion and died of a snakebite. Aristaeos, born in Libya, discovered the silphium plant, and was the patron of beekeepers (mentioned by Virgil), shepards, vintners and olive growers. He also protected Dionysos as a child, and was the lover of Eurydice, who died of a snakebite. While Iokastos has direct connections with Rhegion, the subsidiary imagery of youth and old age, kantharos, grapes, dog, and crow all point to a Dionysiac figure. The serpent seems to play a role in both legends. The possibility remains open that the direct and indirect connections between Aristaeos and Dionysos-Bacchus point to a cult of Aristaeos at Rhegion. Note also the prominence of Apollo, father of Aristaeos, on later coins of Rhegion.