Sale: CNG 66, Lot: 152. Estimate $1500.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 19 May 2004.  Sold For $1800. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SICILY, Thermae Himerenses. After 241 BC. Æ 24mm (10.16 gm). Turreted and veiled head of Tyche right, cornucopiae behind / The poet Tisias (Stesichoros) standing right, leaning on staff and reading a book. Calciati I pg. 120, 18; SNG ANS -; SNG Morcom -; BMC Sicily pg. 84, 9; Virzi 1059. VF, dark brown and green patina. Very rare. ($1500)

Among the men of Zancle (Messana) who, together with exiles of Syracuse, founded Himera in 648 BC, was the father of the poet Tisias, better known as Stesichorus ('choir leader', or 'choral master'). Tisias lived in Himera and there wrote most or all of his 26 books of lyric poetry. When the Carthaginians destroyed Himera in 409 BC, most of the survivors settled seven miles away at the Carthaginian-founded city of Thermae Himerenses, so named for its hot baths. This coin shows a statue of Tisias leaning on a staff and reading from a book of his works. Though the residents of Thermae were distant both in time and location from the founders of Himera, they were proud of Tisias. Along with the Syracusan tyrant Agathokles (born at Thermae in circa 361), Tisias was their most famous citizen. An amphitheatre of the Roman period survives at Thermae and it is likely that the statue depicted here stood in the theatre.