Minerva and Dolphins

[Hoot]

In March I went to the EAC convention in St. Louis. Besides meeting James Garcia, the greatest pleasure was to view all of the wonderful coins. Among the Early American Coppers were many earlier coppers, including many bronze pieces from the Eastern Roman Empire. Those coins are fascinating to me, but I know little about most of the issues.

 

One of the coins that so caught my eye was a Greek issue (greatly predating any Eastern Roman coinage), that I had to buy from Jerry Bobbe. Despite Jerry's incredible knowledge of coins, he knew little about the coin I purchased. Here's what's on the insert: Syracuse, AR. Litra, 344-336 BC. S.1189. Now, that tells me little, except the approximate location of its mintage (eastern shore of Sicily in the "greatest of all Greek cities") and the date. Might anyone here know more and wish to share?

 

One (of many) of the things that I thought wonderful about the coin is that a couple of people who later looked at it said that they had seen a similarly struck coin that possessed the same cud in the obverse northwest field. That indicates that there's more than one survivor of this die, which I find pretty cool in-and-of itself. BTW, the coin is about 7mm thick! 38mm diameter. Obverse and reverse are in nearly perfect medallic turn.

 

Enjoy, Hoot

[gmarguli]

Are you sure it is not 28mm in diamater and not 38mm?

 

It is an AE Drachm.

 

Obverse features the head of Athena facing left, wearing a Corinthian helmet bound with an olive-wreath.

 

Reverse features two dolphins with an octopus (possibly a cuttle-fish) in between. Some references refer to this as a starfish, but Mediterranean starfish have 5 arms and there are 8 arms on this design.

[Hoot]

You are correct that it's 28mm diameter - just a typo. Thanks for the info Greg!

 

Hoot

[ibyandsellsmith]

Very nice. Looks like a pebble coin.