Sale: Triton VIII, Lot: 389. Estimate $3000.  Closing Date: Monday, 10 January 2005.  Sold For $4000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

TROAS, Ilion. Circa 85-84 BC. AR Tetradrachm (16.72 gm, 12h). Period of the First Mithradatic War. Menephronostos, son of Menephron, "magistrate." Head of Athena right, wearing a laureate, crested helmet / AQHNAS I-LIADOS, Athena Ilias standing right, wearing polos and chiton, distaff in left hand, filleted spear over right shoulder, Pegasos at her feet right; monogram behind, MENEFRONOSTOU MENEFRONTOS in exergue. Bellinger T98 = BMC Troas pg. 58, 12 (same dies); De Callataÿ pg. 291 (D1/R4; this coin listed as example f); SNG Copenhagen 363 (same dies); SNG von Aulock 7604 (same dies). Good VF, lightly toned, broad flan, well centered. Rare. ($3000)

From the Garth R. Drewry Collection. Ex Sotheby's (Zurich, 27-28 October 1993), lot 602; Numismatic Fine Arts 20 (10 March 1988), lot 716; Sternberg 9 (15-16 November 1979), lot 36.

Founded in the seventh century BC by Aeolians on the site of ancient Troy, Ilion prospered and ultimately developed into a successful Hellenistic and Roman city. It possessed a famous temple of Athena (‘Ilias’) which was visited by King Xerxes of Persia and later by Alexander the Great. The Romans always had a high regard for Ilion because of the legend of Aeneas and the tradition that Rome's founders were of Trojan origin. With the collapse of Seleukid authority in Asia Minor in 189 BC, Ilion, in common with many other communities of western Asia Minor, celebrated its liberation from regal authority by issuing large and impressive tetradrachms. These honor the goddess Athena Ilias, whose helmeted head appears as the obverse type, while the reverse features her standing figure, probably the statue which stood within the sanctuary.The names appearing on these issues are not technically magistrates, but wealty and influential citizens who financed the coinage from their own monies in return for recognition on the coins (see Bellinger, "The First Civic Tetradrachms of Ilium," ANSMN VIII (1958), pg. 23-24). The patronymic form used on this coinage has a parallel in the earlier stephanophoric coinage of Magnesia ad Maeandrum (see Jones). This particular late issue is of historical significance. The grazing Pegasos symbol was traditionally seen as a reference to Mithradates VI of Pontos, and thus its appearance here probably marks the period following the sack of the city by Fimbria, who then controlled Ilion on behalf of the Pontic king.