Sale: Triton IX, Lot: 605. Estimate $10000.  Closing Date: Monday, 9 January 2006.  Sold For $11000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

BOIOTIA, Thespiai. Early-mid 4th century BC. AR Stater (12.02 g). Boiotian shield / Head of Aphrodite Melainis right; below, small horizontal crescent facing downward; to right, vertical crescent facing left; QESP-KION along lower edge; all within incuse circle. Head, Boeotia p. 56, pl. IV, 20 = BMC 9, pl. XVI, 8 (same dies); Boston MFA Supp. 94 (same rev. die). Good VF, superb old cabinet tone. ($10,000)

Contrary to the opinion expressed in pour Denyse, p. 54, paragraph 2, that the style of this coin is coarser and therefore it is of a later date, the shape of the flan and the reverse concavity suggest an issue before that of the "delicate style". There may not be more than a few years between the two styles though because the distinctive shield shape of the next coin argues for an issue which is contemporary to or just after the large bronzes struck on the occasion of the Peace of Antalkidas (see above, lots 242 and 307, with notes). Unless of course this coin belongs to an even earlier issue, minted during the Corinthian war. If this is the case, then there is no reason for the obols with the two crescents (see above, lots 591 to 596) to start as late as 387 BC either. The same argument could extend to the contemporary staters and rare fraction of Haliartos (see above, lots 163 to 165, with notes) and to the anepigraphic and other early fabric obols of Tanagra. In this connection it is perhaps worth remembering that Babelon (Traité III, pp. 305-307), dates the single and double crescent Thespiai obols to 431-424 BC, whereas Ashton and Etienne-Knoepfler (see note after lot 163 above) would put the Haliartos staters and the rare trident hemiobol back to the 450's!