Nomos 30

CIMMERIAN BOSPOROS. Pantikapaion. Circa 355-340 BC. Tetradrachm (Silver, 27 mm, 15.78 g, 11 h). Laureate head of Apollo to left. Rev. ΠANTI Horse grazing left on groundline with two plants. Anokhin 117. HGC 7, 82. MacDonald 49. Very rare. A splendid coin, of good style and very well-struck. Flan fault on the reverse, otherwise, extremely fine.

This tetradrachm presents an extremely crisp and observant portrait of Apollo on the obverse and a powerfully muscled horse of the nearby Pontic steppe. The wild strength conveyed by the artist’s depiction of the animal marks it as a horse probably belonging to the warlike Scythian and Sarmatian peoples who neighbored the Greek outpost of Pantakapaion. At the same time, the representation of the animal invites favorable comparison with the depictions of grazing horses on the roughly contemporary and much-admired coinage of Larissa in Thessaly.