Sale: CNG 63, Lot: 671. Estimate $5000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 21 May 2003.  Sold For $5000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

PHOENICIA, Marathos. Circa 3rd Century BC. AR Tetradrachm (16.94 gm). Dated year 37 (223/2) BC. Turreted head of Tyche right / Marathos seated left on pile of shields, holding aphlaston and filleted branch; date in Phoenician characters below. Cf. BMC Phoenicia pg. 119, 1 (Year 33); Rouvier 821 (same). Good VF. Extremely rare; approximately 6 tetradrachms of this type are known, but none with this date. ($5000)

The rarity of tetradrachms of Marathos is apparently not related to the brevity of their issue. The other specimen cited by Rouvier (822) is dated year 89 (171/0 BC). Marathos was a dependency of its more powerful neighbor Arados, and only enjoyed brief periods of greater autonomy, when it could strike higher value coins. Presumably its tetradrachms were withdrawn when Arados reasserted itself. Like Kadmos of Sidon, Marathos was a Phoenician "local boy made good", with an intimate connection to Greece itself. Just as Kadmos founded the city of Thebes, the eponymous Marathos is supposed to have founded the deme of Marathon in Attica.