Sale: Triton VIII, Lot: 337. Estimate $20000.  Closing Date: Monday, 10 January 2005.  Sold For $35000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

LAKONIA. Kings of Lakedaimon (Sparta). Kleomenes III. 235-221 BC. AR Tetradrachm (16.83 gm, 12h). Struck circa 227-222 BC. Diademed head of Kleomenes left / L-A, cult statue of Artemis Ortheia right, brandishing spear overhead in right hand, and holding bow in left; at feet below, stag standing right. Grunauer Group III, Series I (V1/R2); BMC Peloponnesus pg. 121, 1; SNG Copenhagen 551 var. (wreath on reverse); Weber 4141 (same obverse die). Good VF, lightly toned, well centered. Extremely rare, only 10 specimens cited by Grunauer, 8 of which are in museums. This specimen is the finest known. ($20,000)

Pausanias, in Periegesis Hellados III.1, vividly sums up the foundation myth of Sparta: “According to the tradition of the Lacedaemonians themselves, Lelex, an aboriginal, was the first king in this land, after whom his subjects were named Leleges. Lelex had a son Myles, and a younger one, Polycaon.... On the death of Myles, his son Eurotas succeeded to the throne.... Having no male heir he left the kingdom to Lacedaemon, whose mother was Taygete, after whom the mountain was named, while according to a report his father was none other than Zeus. Lacedaemon was wedded to Sparta, a daughter of Eurotas. When he came to the throne, he first changed the names of the land and its inhabitants, calling them after himself, and next he founded and named after his wife a city, which even down to our own day has been called Sparta.”

After a long and turbulent history at the center of Greek affairs, by the third century BC Sparta was a declining power. The deadening effects of her conservative monarchical regime were realized far too late. According to the Lykourgan constitution, the possession and use of coinage was forbidden. The first to break with this obsolete rule was King Areus (309-265 BC), who in 267-265 BC, during the Chremonidean War, struck a small series of Attic-weight tetradrachms of Alexandrine type (Grunauer 1-3). Soon after 265 BC there followed a series of reduced Aeginetan obols in an attempt to bring Sparta into line economically with the other states of the Peloponnesus. The second and final issue of tetradrachms (including the present specimen), depicting the king's diademed head and an archaic cult statue of Artemis, has been plausibly attributed by Grunauer and Hoerschelmann to Kleomenes III’s military expeditions in the Peloponnesus between 227 BC and 222 BC. This last attempt at extending Spartan influence led to war with Antigonos III Doson and the Achaean League, and ended disastrously at the battle of Selasia in 222 BC. Upon being defeated, Kleomenes, the last Agiad king of Sparta, fled to Egypt and committed suicide.