Nomos 37

SICILY. Akragas. Circa 409-406 BC. Tetradrachm (Silver, 28 mm, 16.99 g, 4 h). Nymph, holding a goad with her right hand and the reins in both, her robes billowing behind her, driving a galloping quadriga to right, about to turn; above, Nike flying left to crown the charioteer; in the exergue, ketos to right. Rev. Α⟦ΚΡΑΓ-ΑΝΤOΣ⟧(retrograde) Two eagles standing right on a dead hare lying on a rock; the nearer eagle with closed wings and head raised in triumph, the further with open wings and head bent down to tear at the hare; in the field to left, cicada. Gulbenkian 167 = Jameson 510, Rizzo pl. II, 4, and Seltman, Engravers 1 (all from the same dies). Westermark, Akragas, 585.10 (this coin). Very rare. Lightly toned. About extremely fine.

From a Swiss collection, ex Nomos 25, 20 November 2022, 32, from the Dionysus Collection, The New York Sale XLII, 9 January 2018, 23, ex Gorny & Mosch 138, 7 March 2005, 94, from the collection of N. B. Hunt, IV, Sotheby's New York, 19 June 1991, 55, ex Monnaies & Médailles 61, 7 October 1982, 34 (d'un style remarquable) and Schweizerischer Bankverein 2, 27 October 1977, 38.

The final coinages of Akragas before the city’s sack by the Carthaginians in 406 were among the most artistically impressive of all the Sicilian coinage of the 5th century BC. They included beautifully designed and struck tetradrachms (as this) and dekadrachms, as well as small gold pieces. While the city was immensely wealthy and must have issued very large numbers of coins during the years 409-406, after the city was captured it was so thoroughly pillaged by the Carthaginians that any remaining coins would have been seized and melted down. The coins taken away by refugees who managed to escape would have been used for sustenance and re-coined into more convenient issues elsewhere (it would be intriguing if the sudden explosion of dekadrachm coinage in Syracuse was enabled by an influx of silver from Akragas). This helps to explain why the late 5th century coinage of Akragas is so rare, and so desirable.