Sale: Triton VIII, Lot: 329. Estimate $25000.  Closing Date: Monday, 10 January 2005.  Sold For $37500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ARKADIA, Arkadian League. Circa 364-362 BC. AR Stater (12.19 gm, 1h). Megalopolis mint, Olym-, magistrate or engraver. Laureate head of Zeus Lykaios left / APK monogram, Pan, naked, seated left on rocks, torso facing, head turned to right, holding lagobolon in his right hand, leaning on left arm; OLUM on rocks, syrinx at base of rocks. Gerin, "Les statéres de la Ligue Arcadienne," SNR 65 (1986), 3-12 var. (Obv. die 1/Rev. die unlisted); BMC Peloponnesus pg. 173, 49; SNG Copenhagen -; SNG Fitzwilliam 3851 (same obverse die); Gulbenkian 532 (same obverse die); Seltman, Masterpieces of Greek Coinage 48b = Weber 4259 (same obverse die); Traité pl. CCXXIV, 2 = Mionnet II pg. 244, 7 (same obverse die). Good VF, die break and a few light field marks on obverse. A wonderful example of classical art. Very rare. ($25,000)

For her study, Gerin located 32 specimens, 13 of which were struck from obverse die 1. This, ostensibly the fourteenth example, exhibits the die break characteristic of half of the coins, and adds a new reverse die to the corpus.

After the Boeotian victory over the Spartans at Leuktra in 371 BC, an anti-Spartan democratic movement arose in Arkadia in the central Peloponnesos. By 369 BC a confederacy, which included most of the Arkadian city-states, had been established and a new city, which was to be the capital of this new league, was founded. Under the auspices of Epaminondas, the new urban center, called Megalopolis (Megalh PoliV, Big City), combined from five pre-existing neighboring villages was to become the capital of the short-lived Arkadian League and, like Messene, a fortified buffer against Spartan power in the Peloponnesos. Though it experienced difficulties with its constituent communities, the city became the largest city in Arkadia and influential in the Peloponnesos, during which time, our coin was struck. As for the League, problems plagued it as well. By 362 BC it had split with its members fighting on opposite sides at the battle of Mantineia. By 235 BC, when Megalopolis joined the Achaian League, the rest of Arkadia followed, thus ending the Arkadian League.

While Gerin accepts a mid-range date for this issue, she does not accept the traditional view that the OLUM on the reverse is either a reference to an Arkadian victory at the Olympic Games, or that it, along with another example bearing XAP, are engravers' initials. Instead, as her detailed study asserts, the letters represent magistrates' names for this short-lived series.