Triton XIX, Lot: 40. Estimate $7500. Sold for $11000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SICILY, Messana (as Zankle). Circa 500-493 BC. AR Drachm (23.5mm, 5.64 g). Dolphin left; DANKLE below; all within sickle-shaped harbor / Nine-part incuse square with scallop shell in center. Gielow 40 (same obv. die); HGC 2, 766; SNG ANS 302; SNG Lloyd 1076; Basel 359; Boston MFA 285; Kraay & Hirmer 49; Rizzo pl. XXV, 4-5. EF, toned, cleaning marks under tone, a few tiny deposits. Great metal and strike.

From the Friend of a Scholar Collection, purchased from Maison Platt, June 1987.

The colony of Zankle was founded by Cumaean and Euboean settlers in the eighth century BC on the straits of Messina. Its name, meaning "sickle", was taken from its important sickle-shaped harbor. The colony prospered and even founded its own colonies at Mylae and Himera. Zankle was soon overshadowed by Rhegion, though, whose tyrant, Anaxilas, seized the colony around 488 BC and renamed the city Messana, after Peloponnesian Messenia, whose colonists he settled in Zankle.