Sale: Triton VI, Lot: 130. Estimate $1500.  Closing Date: Monday, 13 January 2003.  Sold For $1700. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SICILY, Siculo-Punic. "People of the Camp". Circa 320/315-305/300 BC. AR Tetradrachm (17.16 gm). Wreathed head of Persephone left, wearing triple pendant earring and necklace; four dolphins swimming around / Horsehead left, palm behind; Punic legend 'MMHNT' below. Jenkins III 156 (O48/R141); Boston MFA 491 (same dies); Jameson 917 (same obverse die).Good VF, faint hairline scratches. ($1500) 

This type represents a late phase of the Siculo-Punic coinage when the Carthaginians were engaged in a desperate struggle for supremacy in the island with the Syracusan tyrant Agathokles, leader of the Greeks. Ironically, the obverse head with its surrounding dolphins is almost identical to the contemporary issues of Agathokles himself, both being close copies of Syracusan prototypes of an earlier age. Once again, the issue is made in the name of the “people of the camp”, at this stage perhaps referring to the important Punic stronghold of Lilybaeum founded in 396 BC at the westernmost point of Sicily.