Sale: Triton VIII, Lot: 34. Estimate $2500.  Closing Date: Monday, 10 January 2005.  Sold For $3250. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

LUCANIA, Metapontion. Circa 340-330 BC. AR Nomos (7.76 gm, 8h). DAMOKRATIA, laureate head of Demokratia (Democracy) left, wearing single-pendant earring and neckalce / META downward on right, ear of barley with six grains, leaf to left; |-H above leaf, crossed torches below. Unpublished. Near EF, toned, obverse die rust. Unique. ($2500)

The personification of Democracy is as rare in numismatics as in art, previously unknown at Metapontion and until now attested at only two mints: Knidos with the features of Aphrodite (HN pg. 616; BMC Caria 55-60) and Telos with features of Athena (HN pg. 642; MG 154). In art Democracy is known to have been represented in a celebrated painting by Euphranor together with Demos and Theseus in the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios in Athens, which, according to Pausanias (I, 3,4), was to show that Theseus had given the Athenians political equality. Demokratia also remarkably appears with Oligarchia in a group on the tomb of the extreme Athenian oligarch Kritias, holding a torch and about to burn the personification of oligarchy. More conventionally, in a decree from the Athenian Agora dated to 336 BC, Demokratia is depicted crowning Demos (R. Thompson, Archaeology V, 1952, pp. 145ff).

Ann Johnston’s masterly re-assessment of the coinage of Metapontion (ANSNNM 164, 1990) conclusively demonstrates that the remarkable series of signed nomoi, including this piece, belong to the period after 345 BC, when Timoleon touched there on his expedition to Sicily. Little is known of the history of Metapontion in the fourth century, but it can be presumed that she was a member of the Italiote League in 344 BC when Archidamos of Sparta was invited by Taras to defend the Greek cities against the Samnites, Bretii, and Lucani. Metapontion then figures in the accounts of Alexander of Epierus’ campaigns in southern Italy from 334 BC, and it was there that his body was brought after his assassination in 331 BC. The precise circumstances of this issue remain uncertain, but the existence of this coin must indicate that the city experienced a period of democracy, however brief, during these turbulent times.