Portrait of Prokles

CNG 105, Lot: 213. Estimate $500. Sold for $1400. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

MYSIA, Teuthrania. Prokles. Dynast of Teuthrania and Halisarna, circa 400-399 BC. AR Drachm (13mm, 3.25 g, 5h). Laureate head of Apollo left / Head of Prokles right, wearing Persian headdress; tamgha (of Prokles?) below chin. Winzer 8.2 = Leu 77, lot 278; CNG 102, lot 391; otherwise unpublished. VF, toned, porous. Extremely rare, the third known.

According to Xenophon (Hell. 3.1.6), the cities of Teuthrania and Halisarna were ruled by the brothers Eurysthenes and Prokles as a hereditary territory that had been awarded to their ancestor, the exiled king of Sparta, Demaratos the Lakedaimon, by Xerxes for accompanying the Great King on his Greek expedition (see Hdt. Book 7 for the relationship between the two). The hereditary rule of Teuthrania and Halisarna by the direct descendants of Demaratos, among whom were Eurystenes and Prokles – namesakes of the twin ancestral establishers of the Spartan royal line, suggests that these rulers were not satraps, but local dynasts (for a bibliography of the discussion on the differentiation between satraps and dynasts, see O. Mørkholm, “Pergamene Coins in Copenhagen,” in Studies Mildenberg, p. 182, note 2). Thus, this is one of the earliest depictions of a Greek ruler on a coin.