Nomos 24

CRETE. Apollonia. Circa late 4th century - early 3rd century BC. Stater (Silver, 26 mm, 11.77 g, 6 h). Beardless, youthful male head to right, apparently laureate and, thus, presumably Apollo. Rev. Tripod lebes with tall ring handles; all within a shallow circular incuse. Apparently unpublished, but cf. BMFA Suppl. 107; Le Rider p.33, 238-243 and pl. VIII, 16-20 (but especially p. 33, 238 and pl. VIII, 16); and Svoronos, Numismatique, p. 10, 3 and pl. I, 3 and addenda, Arch. Eph. 1889 p. 360, 4 and pl. 11, 3. For a hemistater struck from the same dies, see Roma 9, 2015, 263. Of great rarity. Nicely toned and of a typically Cretan, rustic style. Extremely fine.

From a European collection and from the Cornerhome Collection, Roma XV, 5 April 2018, 133, XII, 29 September 2016, 231, and 9, 22 March 2015, 262 (ascribed to Axos).

This coin has been ascribed to both Apollonia (by Svoronos among others) and Axos (by Le Rider). The major problem is that the coins of this type, and style, tend to be virtually anepigraphic - either with nothing or just an A. The fact that the male head on the obverse appears to be wearing a rudimentary laurel wreath means that it is a portrait of Apollo, though his head appeared on the coinage of both cities. Svoronos understandably attributed them to Apollonia. They certainly could come from Axos, as Le Rider believed, yet the inscribed issues that are definitely from Axos spell the name with a digamma rather than just an alpha; thus, the similar issues bearing simply an alpha, or nothing, as this one, ought to come from somewhere else. And so we return to Svoronos' attribution of 1889/90 for this coin and those associated with it. The fact that a hemistater was struck from the same dies as this stater, see above, is unusual, but not for Crete, where dies intended for large denominations were often used for smaller ones.