CROTON SILVER STATER – ATTRACTIVE PROVENANCED SPECIMEN EX BRITISH MUSEUM DUPLICATES SALE OF 1923, RICHE COLLECTION SOLD IN 1926, TRAVERSO AND MARITINI SALE OF 1931 – AU GREEK BRUTTIUM PROVENANCED AND PUBLISHED COIN (Inv. 21234)

$11,000.00

21234. BRUTTIUM. CROTON, ca. 400–325 BC.
Silver Stater, 7.67 g, 22 mm.
Obv. Head of Hera Lacinia, facing, turned slightly right, wearing stephane decorated with palmettes. Rev. ΚΡΟΤΩΝΙΑΤΑΝ, Heracles “Epitrapezios”: youthful nude Heracles reclining left on lion skin draped over rock, holding cantharos and club, bow below, B in upper left field.
HGC1, 1463; HN Italy 2168; Attianese 137; SNG ANS 373 (same dies).
Ex Jean Vinchon, 5/22/1959, lot 363 = ex Michele Baranowsky, Valerio Traverso and Joseph Martini sale, 2/25/1931, lot 258 = Rodolfo Ratto, Riche Collection sale, 1/25/1926, lot 704 = ex Ars Classica V, British Museum Duplicates, 6/18/1923, lot 705.
AU, with traces of overstriking, struck from dies of particularly fine style and with a dark gray cabinet patina consistent with its very extensive pedigree.

Croton was founded by Achaean Greek settlers in ca. 710 BC and flourished as one of the early colonies of Magna Graecia. The present stater depicts Hera Lacinia on the obverse. Her epithet is derived from a mythological tradition in which Thetis gave the Lacinian promontory on the east coast of Bruttium to Hera as a gift. The temple of Hera Lacinia at Croton, of which only a single standing column remains today, grew wealthy as the administrative center of the Italiote League—a loose alliance of the cities of Magna Graecia for mutual defense against native Italic peoples. The reverse depiction of Heracles reclining on a rock with his drinking cup was known in antiquity as the Heracles Epitrapezios (“at the Table”) because it suggested that the great hero was reclining in preparation to indulge his appetite at dinner. This type is modeled on a famous statue sculpted by Lysippus and originally owned by Alexander the Great.