Hector of Troy Attempts to Burn the Greek Fleet

CNG 100, Lot: 1721. Estimate $7500. Sold for $7000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

TROAS, Ilium. Valerian I. AD 253-260. Æ Medallion (41mm, 27.02 g, 12h). AV · K · Π · Λ · OV-AΛEPIANOC, laureate, draped, and cuirassed bust right / ΙΛIEΩN EKT-ΩP, Hector, fully armored, advancing right, holding firebrand in raised right hand, large shield in left; two ships to lower right. Bellinger pl. 13, T292 = SNG München 278 = Mionnet II p. 667, 241 (same dies). Good VF, green patina, minor areas of roughness. Extremely rare and the only example in private hands.

From the Frank D. Arnold Collection.

And now, tell me, O Muses that hold your mansions on Olympus, how fire was thrown upon the ships of the Achaeans. Hector came close up and let drive with his great sword at the ashen spear of Ajax. He cut it clean in two just behind where the point was fastened on to the shaft of the spear. Ajax, therefore, had now nothing but a headless spear, while the bronze point flew far away and came ringing down on to the ground. Ajax knew the hand of heaven in this, and was dismayed at seeing that Jove had left him utterly defenseless and was willing victory for the Trojans. Therefore he drew back, and the Trojans flung fire upon the ship which was at once wrapped in flame (Il. XVI.112-124).

This episode in the Iliad describes a shift in the tide of war, when Zeus (Jove) bestows favor on Troy’s prince and chief warrior, Hector, and rallies the Trojans. Hector has driven the Greeks back to their ships and is determined to burn them. Ajax, in one of the poem’s more memorable moments, seemingly single-handedly defends the ships against the Trojan forces with “a great sea-pike in his hands, twelve cubits long” (XV.823-824). But by the time Hector arrives, Ajax is exhausted and the Trojan hero effortlessly strips him of his weapon. The Trojans burn one ship, but the fleet is saved when Patroclus takes to the battlefield disguised in the armor of Achilles, the most feared Greek warrior.

Roman Ilium was raised over what was thought to be the location of Homeric Troy, a notion that has been confirmed by archaeological excavations of the site beginning with Heinrich Schliemann in 1868. The city’s coinage is remarkable for its occasional reference to the Trojan War and its most famous hero. Hector appears on issues from the 1st century to the closing of the mint under Gallienus, but in most instances the coins feature motifs that may have had a precise meaning to Roman Ilium’s citizens and tourists, but to us can only be interpreted as generic types (e.g., Hector in fighting stance; Hector in chariot). Much rarer are those remarkable coins honoring Hector that can be identified with a specific episode in Homer’s epic poem, such as the hero vanquishing Patroclus or attempting to burn the Greek fleet. This latter type appears on a few, very rare earlier issues of Ilium, but was employed as a medallic type only for Valerian. Our medallion appears to be only the third known example of Bellinger T292 (the others in the Staatliche Münzsammlung, Munich and Yale University Art Museum, New Haven, the latter of which is fragmentary), and a unique reverse legend variant is also known (Bellinger T291, in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin). Thus the current medallion, which is the finest of the four, is the only example available to collectors.