From the Virzi Collection

Sale: Triton X, Lot: 100. Estimate $4000.  Closing Date: Monday, 8 January 2007.  Sold For $3000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SICILY, Syracuse. Hieron II. 275-215 BC. Æ 33mm (33.59 g, 9h). Struck circa 265 BC. Diademed head left / IERWNOS, Nike, holding reins in both hands, driving galloping biga right; N below. CNS 196 R1 4; SNG Morcom 816; SNG ANS 908 var. (A below); SNG Lloyd 1553; Laffaille 89; Virzi 1841 (this coin). Good VF, brown surfaces, slight roughness.

Ex Tom Virzi Collection, 1841 (his ticket included).

In 265 BC, Hieron II routed the Mamertines at the river Longanus, west of Messana. This rare issue of about 36 grams may commemorate this victory and, if comparison is made with Mamertine bronze coins, is the equivalent of an octuple bronze piece (cf. SNG ANS Mamertini 401 [double of about 9 grams] and 402-409 [quadruples of about 18 grams]).

Hieron was sufficiently realistic to abandon his early imperial ambitions in favour of loyalty to Rome and the prosperity and well-being of his people. His system of taxation, adopted by Rome after her annexation of Sicily in 241 BC, and monetary reforms on both the international Attic and local litrai standards, eventually led to the introduction of the Roman denarius (equivalent of an Attic drachm of about 4.3 grams) at the time of the siege of Syracuse in 212/1 BC, and the abandonment of large cast bronze aes grave in favour of Greek-like fiduciary struck bronze.