Triton XX, Lot: 12. Estimate $3000. Sold for $5500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

CALABRIA, Tarentum. Circa 320-315 BC. AV Sixth Stater – Diobol (9.5mm, 1.41 g, 11h). Head of Apollo left, wearing laurel wreath; [ΣA] and dolphin to left, TAPAΣ to right / Herakles, raising club overhead in right hand, preparing to strike the Nemean lion as it attacks him from the right; bow and quiver to left, |-H below. Fischer-Bossert G14 (V11/R14); Vlasto 27; HN Italy 951; SNG ANS 1034; SNG BN 1492–3; SNG Copenhagen 834; SNG Lloyd 186; Boston MFA 73 = Warren 36; Hunterian 20; Jameson 161; McClean 599 (all from the same dies). Good VF.

From the collection of a Northern California Gentleman. Ex Triton VI (14 January 2003), lot 34.

Apollo was worshipped as the patron of colonists at Tarentum, and he was also the patron of the revered Pythagorean religious order at Tarentum, which existed until the late fourth century. The reverse motif of Herakles fighting the Nemean lion was also used on contemporary silver diobols of Tarentum and its colony Herakleia, though the silver issues usually chose the "tondo" scene of a crouched Herakles wrestling the Nemean lion with a stranglehold (a design also used on the Syracusan gold 100 litrae issue of Dionysios I).